limitations:can not account for child-care costs; can not fully exclude selection bias into motherhood; potential (down-ward) bias through pre-birth labor supply effects/financial crisis
findings:short-term (<6months) decrease of rtw; long-term (>6-9months) significant positive impact on returning to work in same job under same conditions; greatest response from disadvantaged mothers
channels:supplants previous employer-funded leave which often did not exist for disadvantaged mothers; reduction in opportunity cost of delaying rtw
direction:1# 0 neg / 1 pos
significance:2# 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg
notes:child-care costs may have additional dampening effect on rtw
A study on the introduction of univeral paid maternal leave in Australia, looking at its impacts on mothers returning to work and the conditions they return under.
It finds that, while there is a short-term decrease of mothers returning to work since they make use of the introduced leave period, over the long-term (after six to nine months) there is a significant positive impact on return-to-work.
Furthermore, there is a positive impact on returning to work in the same job and under the same conditions,
the effects of which are stronger for more disadvantaged mothers (measured through income, education and access to employer-funded leave).
This suggests that the intervention reduced the opportunity costs for delaying the return to work, and especially for those women that did not have employer-funded leave options, directly benefiting more disadvantaged mothers.
Some potential biases of the study are its inability to account for child-care costs, as well as not being able to fully exclude selection bias into motherhood.
There also remains the potential of results being biased through pre-birth labor supply effects or the results of the financial crisis, which may create a down-ward bias for either the short- or long-term effects.
