Seminar
Research seminar: Family Leave Programs: Employer Responses and the Gender Wage Gap
- Speaker
- Rita Ginja, UiB
- Date
- 26 November 2019
- When
- 11:45 - 12:45
- Where
- Auditoriet, SSB, Akersveien 26
Content
Rita Ginja, UiB:
https://sites.google.com/site/rcginja/
Family Leave Programs: Employer Responses and the Gender Wage Gap
Abstract
Job-protected family leave and benefits may have unintended consequences when we consider firms’ equilibrium responses. In
the presence of labor market frictions, employers might incur adjustment costs upon workers’ absence and turnover. We quantify
the costs faced by firms that employ workers of varying durations of family-related absence. Exploiting exogenous variations
from a 3-month parental leave expansion in Sweden in 1989, we find that women worked 2.5 months less after childbirth whereas
men worked only 1 week less. Moreover, the reform increased the probability that women separate from their pre-birth employers.
Women with fewer substitutes within the workplace took up less leave and shifted take-up to their spouses, suggesting that
workers internalize their employer’s adjustment costs. We find that firms with greater exposure to the reform responded to
the labor shortage by hiring temporary workers and increasing incumbents’ hours. The total wage cost of these adjustments
was over and above the salary for the person on leave, suggesting that such reorganization is costly. Finally, we document
substantial heterogeneity in firms’ adjustment strategies by the ease with which replacement workers can be found, indicating
several sources of frictions associated with worker absence and exits.
Practical information