Working Papers,
University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics

Abstract: The length of parents’ birth-related leave varies across countries and has been subject of some debate. In this paper, I will focus on some potential bene…ts of leave. I investigate the long-term e¤ects on children of increasing the length of parents’birth-related leave using a natural experiment from 1984 in Denmark when the leave length was increased quite suddenly by almost 50% from 14 to 20 weeks. Regression discontinuity design is used to identify the causal e¤ect of the leave reform and to estimate whether there is a measurable, persistent e¤ect on children’s cognitive and educational outcomes at ages 15 and 21. A population sample of Danish children born in the months around implementation of the reform and a dataset with Danish PISA-2000 scores are used for the analysis. Results indicate that increasing parents’ access to birth-related leave has no measurable e¤ect on children’s long-term cognitive outcomes.

Keywords: Maternity leave; parental leave; child outcomes

JEL-codes: D13; J13; J18

41 pages, January 1, 2007

Note: Accepted for publication in Labour Economics: Rasmussen, A.W.(2009), "Increasing the Length of Parents' Birth-Related Leave: The Effect on Children's Long-Term Educational Outcomes"

Full text files

07-11_awu.pdf  

Download statistics

• University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Helle Vinbaek Stenholt ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:aareco:2007_011This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:19:12.