Full Citation
Title: Can Parental Leave Policies Change Leave-Taking Norms? Evidence from Immigrants
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: When a public policy makes it less costly to take maternity leave, take-up rates are likely to increase as a direct consequence of the lower costs, but if enough people take leave, leave-taking may increase further as norms adjust. This paper provides evidence of these indirect impacts by considering how leave-taking by foreign-born mothers in the U.S. respond to maternity leave policies in their home countries. Because immigrants in the U.S. are not exposed to home country policies but do bring with them norms from their home countries, the impacts of additional weeks of paid leave in home countries on leave-taking behaviors of immigrants can be seen as evidence of a role played by norms. Exploiting variation in the timing of emigration in conjunction with the timing of changes in home country leave policies, we show that even in models controlling for country of origin fixed effects, changes in home country policies yield changes in leave-taking among immigrants in the United States. Interestingly, more recent immigrant arrivers are more affected by current day norms in their home countries than the norms associated with the policies in place when they migrated, a finding potentially explained by the increased role of social media in the transmission of norms.
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Authors: Furtado, Delia; Trajkovski, Samantha
Publisher: University of Connecticut
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage, Gender, Work, Family, and Time
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