Read on Twitter
Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation https://www.nber.org/papers/w28082#.X7Z1HLbjhvc.twitter
First, what we do: we look at all parental leave and child care reforms in Austria since late 1950s. Austria had massive expansion of family policies, like most developed countries in past 60 yrs. For all reforms, we measure effects on full dynamics of outcomes of men&women (2/n)
Then we use these estimates to estimate counterfactual evolution of gender gaps if this expansion had not happened. Bottom-line: gender gap would be exactly the same. so no impact of family policy expansion on gender convergence...(3/n)
why? well, we find that parental leave has short negative impact on career of women (they take leave) but zero long run impact. And child care expansion have no significant impact on outcomes of women/men. (and these are precise zero)...(4/n)
How can that be? well, we show that child care expansion crowds out care by relatives, and that very strong gender norms prevail against working mothers. so even large family policies are not enough to induce them to work (5/n)
does that mean that policies are always ineffective? No! But it means that too few women are at the margin, when norms and preferences are very conservative. so policies cannot do much by themselves (6/n)
At the same time, with endogenous norms, one can envisage tipping points, when suddenly we move quickly to new equilibrium (as in Scandinavia in the 1960s) (7/n)
Furthermore, this does not mean either that these family policies are not important, and should not be enacted: they provide many other social benefits/redistribution that are socially valuable...(8/n)
But if reducing gender inequality is the goal, it tells us that naive view that more family policies will get us to gender convergence is wrong. This will not be enough by itself. Big push is needed for getting away from gender conservative equilibria...(n/n)
