Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/103387 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 685
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
In countries with strong employment protection laws it is often considered to be unwise to hire a woman in childbearing age because she might get pregnant. However, such labour demand e ects of job protection measures related to maternity leave are often rather anecdotal. To provide analytical evidence, this paper studies the impact of changes in maternity-related job protection in Germany on employment opportunities for women in childbearing age without children for whom the observed e ects should be largely demand-related. Exogenous, discrete policy changes in the German labour market of the 1980s and 1990s constitute the setting for a difference-in-differences analysis of the transition into employment as well as wages. The data for this study are taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel and from the German Microcensus. Doubling the job-protected leave period from 6 months to 12 months between 1986 and 1988 led to an approximately 6% lower probability of being hired for women in childbearing age without a university degree.In addition, I nd a 5-10% increase in wages for women in childbearing age associated with the latter reform. Since this effect disappears when controlling for having a child in the future, this may indicate an increased need to signal commitment by increased effort after the reform.
Subjects: 
maternity leave legislation
gender pay gap
education
unemployment
difference-in-differences with group-correlated errors
quasi-natural experiment
JEL: 
J64
J18
J16
J31
K31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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