@article{JessenSpiessWaightsetal.2023, author = {Jessen, Jonas and Spiess, C. Katharina and Waights, Sevrin and Wrohlich, Katharina}, title = {The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany}, series = {German economic review}, volume = {23}, journal = {German economic review}, number = {4}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {1465-6485}, doi = {10.1515/ger-2022-0003}, pages = {641 -- 667}, year = {2023}, abstract = {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 inequality in the division of unpaid care work among mothers and fathers in any persistent way in Germany.}, language = {en} } @article{BauernschusterBorck2016, author = {Bauernschuster, Stefan and Borck, Rainald}, title = {Formal Child Care and Family Structure: Theory and Evidence}, series = {CESifo economic studies : a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit{\~A}\it and Ifo Institute for Economic Research}, volume = {62}, journal = {CESifo economic studies : a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit{\~A}\it and Ifo Institute for Economic Research}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {1610-241X}, doi = {10.1093/cesifo/ifv025}, pages = {699 -- 724}, year = {2016}, abstract = {This article studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with positive assortative matching, where in equilibrium, the poorest women stay single. Couples have to decide on the number of children and spousal specialization in home production of public goods and child care. We then study how child care provision affects the equilibrium. Due to specialization in home production, the incentive to use child care is smaller for married mothers than for single mothers. We show that this increases the number of single mothers and the divorce rate. Using survey data from Germany, we present suggestive empirical evidence consistent with this finding. (JEL codes: J12 and J13).}, language = {en} }