DONDENA Seminar - Philipp Lergetporer

“Early Child Care, Maternal Labor Supply, and Gender Equality: A Randomized Controlled Trial”

SPEAKER: Philipp Lergetporer (Technical University of Munich)

ABSTRACT:

We provide experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care increases maternal labor supply and promotes gender equality among families with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Our intervention offers information and customized help with child care applications, leading to a boost in child care enrollment among lower-SES families. 18 months after the intervention, we find substantial increases in maternal full-time employment (+160%), maternal earnings (+22%), and household income (+10%). Intriguingly, the positive employment effects are not only driven by extended hours at child care centers, but also by an increase in care hours by fathers. Gender equality also benefits more broadly from better access to child care: The treatment improves a gender equality index that combines information on intra-household division of working hours, care hours, and earnings by 40% of a standard deviation, with significant increases in each dimension. For higher-SES families, we consistently observe negligible, insignificant treatment effects.

BIO:

Philipp Lergetporer completed his PhD in economics at the University of Innsbruck in 2014. From 2014 to 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the ifo Center for the Economics of Education, ifo Institute Munich. During that time, he was also a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and NHH Bergen. In September 2021, he joined Technical University of Munich, School of Management, Campus Heilbronn, as Professor of Economics. His research interests are Education Economics, Political Economy, Public Economics, and Behavioral Economics.

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