Does Paternity Leave Reduce Fertility?
Présenté par Libertad González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) & Lídia Farré (Universitat de Barcelona) ; Discutante : Anne Solaz (Ined)
We find that the introduction of two weeks of paid paternity leave in Spain in 2007 led to a reduction in fertility. Following a regression discontinuity design and using
rich administrative data, we show that parents who were (just) entitled to the new paternity leave were less likely to have a subsequent child within the following six years, compared
with (just) ineligible parents, and those who did have another child took longer to do so. We provide evidence in support of two potentially complementary channels. First, fathers’
increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers. This may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child. We also find that men
reported lower desired fertility after the reform, possibly due to their increased awareness
Libertad González
Libertad González received her PhD in Economics from Northwestern University in 2003. Her fields of research are labor, public, and health economics. She is an associate professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Spain). She has published in many international economics journals, including the Journal of the European Economic Association, the American Economic Journal-Economic Policy, the Journal of Human Resources, Labour Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, etc. She is currently the holder of an ERC Consolidator grant with a project studying the impact of early interventions on child human capital development.