National Family Policies and Mothers' Employment: How Earnings Inequality Shapes Policy Effects Across and Within Countries.

ABSTRACT: Although researchers generally agree that national family policies play a role in shaping mothers' employment, there is considerable debate about whether, how, and why policy effects vary across country contexts and within countries by mothers' educational attainment. We hypothesize that family policies interact with national levels of earnings inequality to differentially affect the employment outcomes of mothers by educational attainment. We develop hypotheses about the two most commonly studied family policies-early childhood education and care (ECEC) and paid parental leave. We test these hypotheses by establishing a novel linkage between the EU-Labour Force Survey and the Current Population Survey 1999-2016 (n = 23 countries, 299 country-years, 1.2 million mothers of young children),

SUBMITTER: Hook JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7891546 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature