Too family friendly? The consequences of parent part-time working rights
We use a difference-in-differences model with individual fixed effects to evaluate a 1999 Spanish law granting employment protection to workers with children younger than 6 who had asked for a shorter workweek due to family responsibilities. Our analysis shows that well-intended policies can potenti...
| Autores: | , |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | IE |
| Repositorio: | Repositorio IE |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.ie.edu:20.500.14417/3509 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104407 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3509 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Female employment transitions and wages Compositional bias Fixed-term and permanent contract employment 53 Ciencias Económicas ODS 4 - Educación de calidad ODS 5 - Igualdad de género ODS 8 - Trabajo decente y crecimiento económico ODS 9 - Industria, innovación e infraestructura ODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdades |
| Sumario: | We use a difference-in-differences model with individual fixed effects to evaluate a 1999 Spanish law granting employment protection to workers with children younger than 6 who had asked for a shorter workweek due to family responsibilities. Our analysis shows that well-intended policies can potentially backfire and aggravate labor market inequalities between men and women, since there is a very gendered take-up, with only women typically requesting part-time work. After the law was enacted, employers were 49% less likely to hire women of childbearing age, 40% more likely to separate from them, and 37% less likely to promote them to permanent contracts, increasing female non-employment by 4% to 8% relative to men of similar age. The results are similar using older women unaffected by the law as a comparison group. Moreover, the law penalized all women of childbearing age, even those who did not have children. These effects were largest in low-skill jobs, at firms with less than 10 employees, and in industries with few part-time workers. These findings are robust to several sensitivity analyses and placebo tests. |
|---|