Econ Seminar: Hosny Zoabi (The New Economic School Moscow)

Hosny Zoabi from The New Economic School (Moscow) will present his paper entitled "Does Paternity Leave promote Gender Equality within Households?” on Wednesday, 30th of November at 11.45.  The seminar will be in seminar room FASS 2054, but will be also available online at

https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/91383976765

Does Paternity Leave promote Gender Equality within Households?  

Our theory predicts that paternity leave (PL) has heterogeneous effects for low, intermediate, and high wage-gap couples, such that a quota forfathers can break traditional specialization agreements in intermediate-gap couples. Using Spanish data and a regression discontinuity design, we first identify the three groups using the model’s predictions regarding PL effects on fathers’ leave length. Then we test our model’s predictions on a range ofoutcomes. We don’t find systematic effects of a paternity leave expansion on low- or high-gap couples, while we document that, among intermediate-gap couples, the two-week PL introduced in Spain in 2007 led to a 3 percentage-point drop in couples having another child, a 4 percentage-point increase in couples getting divorced, a persistent increase in fathers’ housework and childcare time of more than an hour per day each, and an increase of 8 percentage points in maternal employment two years after childbirth.