Publications:
"The Effects of Paid Maternity Leave: Evidence from Temporary Disability Insurance" (Journal of Health Economics)
This paper investigates the effects of a large-scale paid maternity leave program on birth
outcomes in the United States. In 1978, states with Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI)
programs were required to start providing wage replacement benefits to pregnant women,
substantially increasing access to antenatal and postnatal paid leave for working mothers.
Using natality data, I find that TDI paid maternity leave reduces the share of low birth
weight births by 3.2 percent, and the estimated treatment-on-the-treated effect is over 10
percent. It also decreases the likelihood of early term birth by 6.6 percent. Paid maternity
leave has particularly large impacts on the children of unmarried and black mothers.
Press coverage:
"Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing" (Journal of Economic Perspectives)
with Shelly Lundberg and Robert Pollak
Also NBER Working Paper No. 22078
The last 60 years have seen the emergence of a dramatic socioeconomic gradient in marriage, divorce,
cohabitation, and childbearing. The divide is between college graduates and others: those without
four-year degrees have family patterns and trajectories very similar to those of high school graduates.
We document these trends and show that, compared with college graduates, less-educated women are
more likely to enter into cohabiting partnerships early and bear children while cohabiting, are less likely
to transition quickly into marriage, and have much higher divorce rates.
There are two broad sets of explanations for these differences. Conventional explanations focus on the
diminished economic prospects of less-educated men. We propose an alternative explanation focusing
on educational differences in demand for marital commitment. As the gains from traditional gender-based
specialization have declined, the value of marriage has decreased relative to cohabitation, which offers
many of the gains of co-residence with less commitment. We argue that college graduate parents use
marriage as a commitment device to facilitate intensive joint investments in their children. For less educated
couples for whom such investments are less desirable or less feasible, commitment and, hence, marriage
has less value relative to cohabitation. The resulting socioeconomic divergence has implications for children
and for future inequality.
Press coverage:
"Paid Family Leave, Fathers’ Leave-Taking, and Leave-Sharing in Dual-Earner Households" (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management)
with Ann Bartel, Chris Ruhm, Maya Rossin-Slater, and Jane Waldfogel
Also NBER Working Paper No. 21747
This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of paid leave legislation on fathers’
leave-taking, as well as on the division of leave between mothers and fathers in dual-earner households.
Using difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference designs, we study California’s
Paid Family Leave (CA-PFL) program, which is the first source of government-provided paid parental
leave available to fathers in the United States. Our results show that fathers in California are 0.9 percentage
points—or 46 percent relative to the pre-treatment mean—more likely to take leave in the first year
of their children’s lives when CA-PFL is available. We also examine how parents allocate leave in
households where both parents work. We find that CA-PFL increases father-only leave-taking (i.e.,
father on leave while mother is at work) by 50 percent and joint leave-taking (i.e., both parents on
leave at the same time) by 28 percent. These effects are much larger for fathers of sons than for fathers
of daughters, and almost entirely driven by fathers of first-born children and fathers in occupations
with a high share of female workers.
Press coverage:
"Can Paid Sick Leave Mandates Decrease Leave-Taking?" (Labour Economics)
with Corey White
Since 2006, several cities and states have implemented paid sick leave mandates that require
employers to provide workers with access to paid sick leave. These mandates have substantially
expanded access to paid leave, especially within low-skill occupations including retail and food
services. We examine the effects of the two largest paid sick leave mandates in Connecticut (2011)
and Washington, D.C. (2008) on leave-taking behavior and public health. After these policies are
implemented, there are significant decreases in aggregate personal illness leave-taking rates, relative
to control groups, for both those directly affected and those not directly affected by the policy. This
suggests such policies can provide large public health externalities by allowing sick workers to stay
home rather than coming to work and spreading their illness to customers and coworkers.
Press coverage:
"Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?" (American Economic Review)
with Heather Antecol and Kelly Bedard
IZA Discussion Paper No. 9904
Many skilled professional occupations are characterized by an early period of intensive skill
accumulation and career establishment. Examples include law firm associates, surgical residents,
and untenured faculty at research-intensive universities. High female exit rates are
sometimes blamed on the inability of new mothers to survive the sustained negative productivity
shock associated with childbearing and early childrearing in these environments.
Gender-neutral family policies have been adopted in some professions in an attempt to
“level the playing field.” The gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies adopted by the
majority of research-intensive universities in the United States in recent decades are an excellent
example. But to date, there is no empirical evidence showing that these policies
help women. Using a unique data set on the universe of assistant professor hires at top-
50 economics departments from 1985-2004, we show that the adoption of gender-neutral
tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially
increasing male tenure rates.
Press coverage:
"Women in Economics: Stalled Progress" (Journal of Economic Perspectives)
with Shelly Lundberg
IZA Working Paper No. 11974
HCEO Working Paper No. 2018-090 and research spotlight
In this paper, we first document trends in the gender composition of academic economists over the
past 25 years, the extent to which these trends encompass the most elite departments, and how
women’s representation across fields of study within economics has changed. We then review the
recent literature on other dimensions of women’s relative position in the discipline, including research
productivity and income, and assess evidence on the barriers that female economists face in publishing,
promotion, and tenure. While underlying gender differences can directly affect the relative productivity
of men and women, due to either differential constraints or preferences, productivity gaps do not fully
explain the gender disparity in promotion rates in economics. Furthermore, the progress of women has
stalled relative to that in other disciplines in the past two decades. We propose that differential
assessment of men and women is one important factor in explaining this stalled progress, reflected in
gendered institutional policies and apparent implicit bias in promotion and editorial review processes.
"Unequal Use of Social Insurance Benefits: The Role of Employers" (Journal of Econometrics)
with Sarah Bana, Kelly Bedard, and Maya Rossin-Slater
NBER Working Paper No. 25163
IZA Working Paper No. 11882
California's Disability Insurance (DI) and Paid Family Leave (PFL) programs have become important
sources of social insurance, with benefit payments now exceeding those of the state's Unemployment
Insurance program. However, there is considerable inequality in program take-up. While existing
research shows that firm-specific factors explain a significant part of the growing earnings inequality
in the U.S., little is known about the role of firms in determining the use of public leave-taking benefits.
Using administrative data from California, we find strong evidence that DI and PFL program take-up is
substantially higher in firms with high earnings premiums. A one standard deviation increase in the firm
premium is associated with a 57 percent higher claim rate incidence. Our results suggest that changes
in firm behavior have the potential to impact social insurance use and thus reduce an important
dimension of inequality in America.
Working Papers:
with Anne Brenoe and Richard Martin
Using data from the only large-scale randomized controlled trial promoting prolonged
exclusive breastfeeding, we show that the intervention significantly and persistently
increased weight-for-age. To explain this result, we provide novel evidence
of changes in infant feeding patterns. The estimated increase in calories that treated
infants consumed explains a major share of the weight gain in early infancy. Our
results suggest that understanding the common alternatives to breast milk is key for
designing optimal infant feeding policies.
"The Long-Run Effects of Wage Replacement and Job Protection: Evidence from Two Maternity Leave Reforms in Great Britain"
This paper examines the effects of maternity leave coverage on women's employment and career
trajectories in Great Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Using a
difference-in-differences identification strategy and two changes to the national maternity leave
policy, I distinguish between the effects of expanding access to wage replacement benefits and
the additional effects of providing job protection benefits. Access to paid maternity leave increases
the probability of returning to work after childbirth in the short run, but has no effect on long-run
employment. Expanding the amount of job protection available to new mothers results in substantial
increases in maternal employment rates and job tenure more than five years later. However,
job-protected leave expansions lead to fewer women holding management positions and other jobs
with the potential for promotion. Although these maternity leave policies have large employment
effects on the extensive margin, there is little evidence of effects on average earnings.
I make three primary contributions to the existing literature. First, by separately identifying the effects
of expanding access to wage replacement benefits from the additional effects of providing job protection,
I show that job protection is important in order to increase mothers' labor force attachment in the long
run. Second, I provide evidence that access to job-protected paid maternity leave has substantial negative
effects on the career trajectories of highly educated workers. These women are substantially less likely to
hold management positions or to have been promoted in the five years after the birth of a child, which
suggests that job-protected paid maternity leave can actually exacerbate gender inequality in some
settings. Finally, I add to the literature on the long-run effects of maternity leave in a setting where the
duration of the benefits is relatively short. This is important for optimal policy design in the United States,
because compared to the policies in most of the other countries studied in the existing literature, Great
Britain's policies are much more similar to one that could be feasibly implemented in the U.S.
Work in Progress:
"The Effect of COVID-19 Countermeasures on Gender Gaps in Research Productivity"
with Tatyana Deryugina and Olga Shurchkov
We compare publication patterns of male and female academics before and after COVID-19. Early results
focus on pre-print/working paper series and show that submissions by female economists decrease after
COVID-19 disruptions relative to before. We are currently running a survey to collect information on respondents'
circumstances and time use to better understand these effects.
Press coverage:
"Effects of Relative Wage on Children's Educational Attainment"