Do Generous Parental Leave Policies Help Top Female Earners?

35 Pages Posted: 23 May 2020

See all articles by Gozde Corekcioglu

Gozde Corekcioglu

Ozyegin University

Marco Francesconi

University of Essex; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Astrid Kunze

Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) - Department of Economics; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); CESIfo

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Abstract

Generous government-mandated parental leave is generally viewed as an effective policy to support women's careers around childbirth. But does it help women to reach top positions in the upper pay echelon of their firms? Using longitudinal employer-employee matched data for the entire Norwegian population, we address this question exploiting a series of reforms that expanded paid leave from 30 weeks in 1989 to 52 weeks in 1993. The representation of women in top positions has only moderately increased over time, and career profiles of female top earners within firms are significantly different from those of their male counterparts. The reforms did not affect, and possibly decreased, the probability for women to be at the top over their life cycle. We discuss some implications of this result to put into perspective the design of new family-friendly policy interventions.

Keywords: top earners, parental leave, women, regression discontinuity

JEL Classification: J18, J21, J22, J24, M14

Suggested Citation

Corekcioglu, Gozde and Francesconi, Marco and Kunze, Astrid, Do Generous Parental Leave Policies Help Top Female Earners?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13275, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3608524 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3608524

Marco Francesconi

University of Essex ( email )

Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom
+44 1206 873 534 (Phone)
+44 1206 873 151 (Fax)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Astrid Kunze

Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) - Department of Economics ( email )

Helleveien 30
N-5035 Bergen, NO-5045
Norway
+ 47 55 95 97 54 (Phone)
+ 47 55 95 95 43 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.nhh.no/en/employees/faculty/astrid-kunze/

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany
+49 228 38 94 221 (Phone)
+49 228 38 94 180 (Fax)

CESIfo ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

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