About

Welcome to my website. 

I am the head of the research group Education and Human Potential at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BIB). I am also a research fellow at IZA Bonn, a fellow of the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER) and a member of the Education Economics Committee of the German Economic Association (Bildungsökonomischer Ausschuss des Vereins für Socialpolitik). I earned my PhD from Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with DIW Berlin's Graduate Center.

My primary research interests lie in the economics of human capital formation and the impact of public policies in this area, particularly with respect to education, family and health. I am also interested in factors affecting the balance between work and family life and their consequences for parents and children. I lead the DFG-funded WORK-MUM project, am part of the German team in the GUIDE project, which is establihing an international child cohort study on children's well-being, and contribute to the evaluation of the Startchancen-Programm (Start Opportunities Programme), the largest federal investment programme supporting schools with a high proportion of socio-economically disadvantaged students. 

I also study public policy impacts on parental leave, childcare, inequality in child well-being, and the societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

LATEST NEWS. 

20/21 November 2025: Together with Malin Mahlbacher, I organized a workshop on "Contemporary Challenges for Parents and Children"  in Berlin as part of my DFG-funded project "Understanding the role of maternal labour markets and workplace contexts for children’s development" [WORK-MUM].

2 November 2025: Our paper on "Overlooked Potential? Childcare Services and Ukrainian Refugee Mothers in Germany" has been accepted for publication at Demography. 

1 October 2025: Back from paternity leave. 

5 December 2024: Our paper on "Parental Leave, Worker Substitutability, and Firms' Employment" has been accepted for publication in The Economic Journal. 

Nov '24-Oct '25: I am on Paternity Leave for our third child :-) - Relatedly, check out our new paper on "Caring Dads" below!

30 October 2024: New Discussion Paper on "Caring Dads? Universal Childcare, Paternal Leave and Fathers' Involvement" as IZA Discussion Paper No. 17422. We examine the impact of the combined availability of universal childcare and paternity leave on fathers' involvement during the early years of childhood. While fathers become more likely to take paternity leave with the expectation of mothers entering the labour market sooner, their subsequent roles as caregivers, as well as their labour market outcomes, remain largely unaffected by the childcare expansion. We conclude that significant family policy efforts could not immediately alter fathers' caregiving responsibilities within the family.