TY  - JOUR
A1  - Jessen, Jonas
A1  - Spiess, C. Katharina
A1  - Waights, Sevrin
A1  - Wrohlich, Katharina
T1  - The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
JF  - German economic review
N2  - 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.
KW  - gender division
KW  - domestic work
KW  - child care
KW  - day care
KW  - gender care gap
KW  - COVID-19
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2022-0003
SN  - 1465-6485
SN  - 1468-0475
VL  - 23
IS  - 4
SP  - 641
EP  - 667
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Frodermann, Corinna
A1  - Wrohlich, Katharina
A1  - Zucco, Aline
T1  - Parental leave policy and long-run earnings of mothers
JF  - Labour economics
N2  - Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women’s employment rates but to decrease their wages in case of extended leave duration. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers’ long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a more generous earnings-related benefit that is granted for a shorter period of time. Additionally, a ”daddy quota” of two months was introduced. To identify the causal effect of this policy mix on long-run earnings of mothers, we use a difference-in-differences approach that compares labor market outcomes of mothers who gave birth just before and right after the reform and nets out seasonal effects by including the year before. Using administrative social security data, we confirm previous findings and show that the average duration of employment interruptions increased for mothers with high pre-birth earnings. Nevertheless, we find a positive long-run effect on earnings for mothers in this group. This effect cannot be explained by changes in the selection of working mothers, working hours or changes in employer stability. Descriptive evidence suggests that the stronger involvement of fathers, incentivized by the ”daddy months”, could have facilitated mothers’ re-entry into the labor market and thereby increased earnings. For mothers with low pre-birth earnings, however, we do not find beneficial long-run effects of this parental leave reform.
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102296
SN  - 0927-5371
VL  - 80
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ilieva, Boryana
A1  - Wrohlich, Katharina
T1  - Gender gaps in employment, working hours and wages in Germany
BT  - trends and developments over the last 35 years
JF  - CESifo forum
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/CESifo-Forum-2022-2-ilieva-wrohlich-gender-employment-and-pay-gap-march.pdf
SN  - 2190-717X
SN  - 1615-245X
VL  - 23
IS  - 2
SP  - 17
EP  - 19
PB  - Ifo
CY  - Munich
ER  -