Full Citation
Title: Essays on Parental Leave and Family Labour Supply
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2018
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: This thesis studies married couples’ decisions regarding labour supply, fertility, and take-up of parental leave. Importantly, it emphasizes household interactions in a family labour supply framework where husbands and wives jointly make decisions. In Chapter 2, I describe how differences in married individuals’ time allocations between Canada and the U.S. may be related to different parental leave policies in the two countries. First, I document background information on parental leave policies and take-up behaviour in the two countries. Second, I analyze married individuals’ time allocations using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) for Canada and American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for the U.S. I examine the role of having children on their parents’ time allocations across market work, child care, household chores, and leisure and make cross-country comparisons. In Chapter 3, I investigate the effects of maternity leave policies on married couples’ fertility and employment decisions. I develop and characterize a unique household search model that features home production and endogenous fertility choice. I characterize reservation rules in the household search model and find that this model can generate patterns that cannot be generated by an individual search model. In particular, I parameterize a benchmark model that provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave as in the U.S. I use a parameterized model to examine the impact of an extended paid maternity leave policy on fertility rates and household employment. I find that a longer paid maternity leave increases fertility rates, lowers fraction of dual-earner couples, and increases the fraction of single-earner couples.
Url: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7524&context=etd
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Choi, Youjin
Institution: The University of Western Ontario
Department: Economics
Advisor: Bowlus, Audra; Caucutt, Elizabeth
Degree: PhD
Publisher Location: Ontario
Pages:
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
Countries: