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Many developed countries have made it an explicit policy goal to support equal sharing of childcare and household responsibilities as well as market work. Differences in labor supply of men and women typically emerge after the birth of the first child and often remain permanently. Thus, the birth of the first child marks a critical transition. Consequently, policy instruments targeting this time have the potential to change long-run outcomes substantially by preventing the gap from opening up in the first place. In this context, parental benefits have received special attention because depending on the particular regulations embedded in the benefit scheme, they have the potential to counteract or reinforce specialization according to traditional gender roles and naturally directly target the crucial transition into parenthood.
This project analyzes how different parental benefit schemes affect the division of labor by couples. Initially the focus will be on the German parental benefit called “Elterngeld” and specifically the ElterngeldPlus regulations. However, the project can be extended to analyze other aspects of the parental benefit scheme or reform suggestions. To this end, the project employs different research methodologies, including the analysis of data from existing large scale household surveys and data gained from experiments specifically designed for this project.
Besides analyzing the consequences of specific regulations, a second focus of this project is to investigate the circumstances which may prevent the regulations from reaching their full potential impact, such as insufficient information provision regarding the actual incentives incorporated in the benefit scheme.