Jonas Jessen - Publications

Publications

The Micro and Macro Effects of Changes in the Potential Benefit Duration cite
The Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
with Robin Jessen, Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak, Marek Góra and Jochen Kluve.
Covered by Handelsblatt

We quantify micro and macro effects of changes in the potential benefit duration (PBD) in unemployment insurance. In Poland, the PBD is 12 months for the newly unemployed if the previous year’s county unemployment rate is more than 150% of the national average, and 6 months otherwise. We exploit this cut-off using regression discontinuity estimates on registry data containing the universe of unemployed from 2005 to 2019. For those whose PBD is directly affected by the policy rule, benefit recipients younger than 50, a PBD increase from 6 to 12 months leads to 13 percent higher unemployment. A decomposition analysis reveals that 12 months after an increase in the PBD, only half of the increase in unemployment is due to the effect on search effort (the micro effect) while the other half is due to increased inflows into unemployment. The total effect on unemployment, which includes equilibrium effects, is entirely explained by the increase in unemployment of workers directly affected by the policy change. We find no evidence of spill-overs on two distinct groups of unemployed whose PBD is unchanged and no effect on measures of labour market tightness.
Replication package
LinkedIn summary post

Child Penalties in Labour Market Skills cite
European Economic Review, forthcoming
with Lavinia Kinne and Michele Battisti

This paper estimates child penalties in labour-market-relevant cognitive skills, such as numeracy but also literacy and problem-solving competencies. We use international PIAAC data and adapt a pseudo-panel approach to a single cross-section covering 29 countries. Numeracy scores, which are associated with the largest returns to skills and pronounced gender differences, decline by 0.11 standard deviations for fathers and an additional 0.07 for mothers. We find no evidence of a deterioration in the occupational skill match for either mothers or fathers. Our findings suggest that changes in general labour market skills such as numeracy competencies explain at most 10% of child penalties in earnings. We additionally show that cross-sectional estimates of child penalties can be sensitive to controlling for predetermined characteristics that vary across cohorts, in our case education.
Replication package
Twitter thread

Parental Leave, Worker Substitutability, and Firms' Employment [pdf] cite
The Economic Journal, 2025
with Mathias Huebener, Daniel Kuehnle and Michael Oberfichtner.
Summary of our findings at the IZA Newsroom in English and German and at IAB-FORUM.
Awarded with the BeNA Innovative Research Award 2019. Covered by Spiegel, FAZ, Stern, Rheinische Post

Motherhood and parental leave are frequent causes of worker absences and employment interruptions, yet we know little about their effects on firms. Based on linked employer-employee data from Germany, we examine how more generous leave benefits affect firm-level employment and hiring decisions. Focusing on small- and medium-sized firms, we show that more generous benefits reduce firm-level employment in the short term, which is driven by firms with few internal substitutes for the absent mother. However, firms do not respond to longer expected absences by hiring fewer young women, even when few internal substitutes are available. To rationalise the findings, we show that replacement hiring occurs largely before the expected absence and that firms hire more external replacements when fewer internal substitutes are available. These findings indicate that extended leave does not harm firms when these can plan for the longer worker absences.
Replication package

Long-run effects of earlier voting eligibility on turnout and political involvement [pdf] cite
The Journal of Politics, 2024
with Daniel Kuehnle and Markus Wagner
Summary JOP Blogpost

Theories of habit formation and transformative voting posit that voting has long-run consequences for turnout and political involvement, with younger voters possibly experiencing more pronounced effects from earlier eligibility. Long-term evidence of the effects of becoming eligible to vote at a younger age remains scarce. We use rich, long-term panel data from the UK to examine the effects of earlier voting eligibility on turnout and political involvement. By leveraging the election eligibility cut-off in a regression discontinuity design, our precise estimates document that earlier eligibility results in contemporaneous increases in several measures of political involvement. However, these short-term effects fade away quickly and do not translate into permanent changes in turnout propensity or political involvement. Our results imply that, in a setting with low institutional barriers to vote, the persistent and transformative effects of being eligible to vote at a younger age are short-lived at most.Replication packageTwitter thread

Immigration, Female Labour Supply and Local Cultural Norms [pdf] cite
The Economic Journal, 2024
with Sophia Schmitz and Felix Weinhardt

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunication. These migrants grew up with high rates of maternal employment, whereas West German families mostly followed the traditional breadwinner-housewife model. We find that West German women increase their labour supply and that this holds within households. We provide additional evidence on stated gender norms, West-East friendships, intermarriage, and child care infrastructure. The dynamic evolution of the effects on labour supply is best explained by local cultural learning.
Replication packageBluesky threadTwitter thread

A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany [pdf] cite
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2023
with Luis R. Martínez and Guo Xu
Covered at Marginal Revolution and National Affairs Blog. BSE Insights summary

This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40% of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially under Allied control but was ceded to Soviet control less than two months later. Brief Allied exposure increased protests during the major 1953 uprising and reduced Communist support during the last free elections of 1946. We use novel survey data to argue that even a “glimpse of freedom” can foster civilian opposition to dictatorship. Replication packageEndorsement by 'The Hoff' for the publication Twitter thread

Maternity leave versus early child care – what are the long-term consequences for children? [pdf] cite
IZA World of Labor, 2023
with Nabanita Datta Gupta

There is growing agreement among parents in high-income countries that having a working mother does not harm a preschool child. Yet, research is ongoing on what the long-run effects on children are of being looked after at home (primarily by their mothers) or in child care. Most studies find positive effects of child care on child outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and moderate effects for children from more advantaged backgrounds. The effects of maternity leave expansions on child outcomes depend on the type of counterfactual care and after the first six months, hardly any beneficial effects on children can be found. Parents in many cases are able to compensate for reduced time with their children when they are in child care with increased engaged parenting time when they are home with them. A shortage of day care workers in many settings has led to a resurgence of maternity leave expansions and cash-for-care schemes. Policy makers need to improve compensation and the working environment for the sector if a high-quality level is to be achieved and if the beneficial effects on children from especially disadvantaged backgrounds and gains in terms of gender equality are to be maintained.

Culture, Children and Couple Gender Inequality [pdf] cite
European Economic Review, 2022

This paper examines how culture impacts within-couple gender inequality. Exploiting the setting of Germany’s division and reunification, I compare child penalties of East Germans who were socialised in a more gender egalitarian culture to West Germans socialised in a gender-traditional culture. Using a household panel, I show that the long-run child penalty on the female income share is 23.9 percentage points for West German couples, compared to 12.9 for East German couples. The arrival of children also leads to a greater increase in the female share of housework and child care for West Germans. I add to the main findings by using time-use diary data from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and reunified Germany, which provides a rare insight into gender inequality in the GDR and allows me to compare the effect of having children in the GDR to the effects in East and West Germany after reunification. Lastly, I show that attitudes towards maternal employment are more egalitarian among East Germans, but that the arrival of children leads to more traditional attitudes for both East and West Germans. The findings confirm that socialisation has a strong impact on child penalties and that family policies may have an impact on gender inequality through social learning in the long run.Replication package Twitter thread

The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany [pdf] cite
German Economic Review, 2022
with C. Katharina Spiess, Sevrin Waights and Katharina Wrohlich

The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of day care centres and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There has been much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany from spring 2020 and winter 2021 we present an empirical analysis that shows that although gender inequality in the division of care work increased to some extent in the beginning of the pandemic, it returned to the pre-pandemic level in the second lockdown almost nine months later. These results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic neither aggravated nor lessened nequality in the division of unpaid care work among mothers and fathers in any persistent way in Germany.Replication package Twitter thread

Centre-Based Care and Parenting Activities [pdf] cite
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2022
with C. Katharina Spiess and Sevrin Waights

We examine the relationship between parenting activities and centre-based care using time diary and survey data for mothers in Germany. While mothers using centre-based care spend significantly less time in the presence of their child, we find that differences in the time spent on specific activities such as reading, talking, and playing with the child are relatively small or zero. The pattern of results is more pronounced for lower education mothers. The lack of large decreases in activities is explained by two factors: (i) that centre care replaces time that parents spend with the child but are doing other things such as housework or leisure (a small direct effect), and (ii) that evenings become relatively more activity-rich (a compensating indirect effect). For the intensive margin (full-day vs. half-day), we find more additional reductions in parenting activities, but these are compensated for by lower education mothers during non-centre hours. Our findings represent novel evidence that activities in the home environment are a complement to centre-based care, highlighting a credible additional mechanism for child development effects of centre-based care.

The Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Informality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries [pdf] cite
World Development, 2021
with Jochen Kluve

Labor markets in low- and middle-income countries are characterized by high levels of informality. A multitude of interventions have been implemented to increase the formalization of firms and workers, including information campaigns, simplified registration procedures, reductions of payroll taxes, and interventions enforcing formalization. We compile a database of 170 impact estimates from 38 academic studies that evaluate empirically one or more of these formalization interventions. The quantitative analysis correlates the impact estimates of the studies — given as a measure of sign and statistical significance, the effect size or percent impacts — with explanatory factors such as intervention type, outcome variable, scope of the intervention, and contextual factors such as study design and economic context. Several key findings emerge: first, tax incentives are a particularly effective intervention type, and information interventions constitute an important component to combine with other interventions. Second, the outcome "worker registration" shows significantly better results than other outcomes. Third, large-scale policies are more effective on average than singular programs. Fourth, interventions tend to be more effective in a more promising (labor) market context.

Understanding Day Care Enrolment Gaps [pdf] cite
Journal of Public Economics, 2020
with Sevrin Waights and Sophia Schmitz

We document gaps in day care enrolment by family background in a country with a universal day care system (Germany). Research demonstrates that children of parents with lower educational attainment and children of migrant parents may benefit the most from day care, making it important to understand why such enrolment gaps exist. We use a unique data set that records both parental demand for day care and actual usage to investigate determinants using complementary decomposition and quasi-experimental analyses. Our decomposition shows that (a) differences in demand are important but do not fully explain the enrolment gaps, (b) large shares of the gaps are unexplained, especially for migrant parents, and (c) the heterogeneous effects of access barriers (shortages and fees) may explain some of the remaining gaps. Our quasi-experimental design finds that reducing shortages significantly decreases the enrolment gap by parental education but not by parental migrant status. Similarly, using the synthetic control method we show that a reduction of fees reduces only the gap by parental education. We discuss implications for policy.

Punishing Potential Mothers? Evidence for Statistical Employer Discrimination from a Natural Experiment [pdf] cite
Labour Economics, 2019
with Robin Jessen and Jochen Kluve

Before 2006, large firms in Germany were obliged to pay for the generous maternity protection of female employees, such that firms’ expected costs depended on employees’ gender and age. From 2006 onward, all firms paid for maternity protection by contributing to the statutory health insurance system, where the contribution depends only on the number of employees and their wages and is thus independent of gender and age. This had been the regulation for small firms already before the reform. Using data from linked employer-employee administrative records, we provide evidence that the reform was followed by an increase in female relative wages within large firms. This reform effect provides evidence for statistical employer discrimination in the pre-2006 setup.

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