Maternity leave policies are designed to safeguard the health of pregnant workers and their unborn children. However, little is known about the impact of existing policies, which are not evidence-based. We evaluate a maternity leave extension in Austria, which increased mandatory leave from 6 to...

Superstition is a widespread phenomenon. We empirically examine its impact on health-related behavior and health outcomes. We study the case of the Taiwanese Ghost month. During this period, which is believed to increase the likelihood of bad outcomes, we observe substantial adaptions in...

Using Austrian and Danish administrative data, we examine the impacts of parenthood on mental health equality. Parenthood imposes a greater mental health burden on mothers than on fathers. It creates a long-run gender gap in antidepressant prescriptions of about 93.2% (Austria) and 64.8%...

Using Bayesian Markov chain clustering analysis we investigate career paths of Austrian women after their first birth. This data-driven method allows characterizing long-term career paths of mothers over up to 19 years by transitions between parental leave, non-employment and different forms of...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unex- pected career interruptions which occur as a consequence of job displace- ment. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of dis- placed women with those of women una®ected by job loss after establish- ing the...

We study the effect of job displacement on fertility in a sample of white collar women in Austria. Using instrumental variables methods we show that unemploy- ment incidence as such has no negative effect on fertility decisions, but the very fact of being displaced from a career-oriented job...

We study the contribution of health-related behaviors to the health-education gradient by distinguishing between short-run and long-run mediating effects: while in the former only current or lagged behaviors are taken into account, in the latter we consider the entire history of behaviors. We...