BACKGROUND Recent studies indicate that short maternity leave, and, more generally, full-time maternal employment during the first year of life, detract from children's health, cognitive development, and behavioral outcomes. Much less is known, however, about how early parental employment affects the mental and physical health of the mothers themselves. AIMS OF THE STUDY The purpose of this p...

Gender inequalities in health have been widely described, but few studies have examined the upstream sources of these inequalities in health. The objectives of this review are 1) to identify empirical papers that assessed the effect of gender equality policies on gender inequalities in health or on women's health by using between-country (or administrative units within a country) comparisons an...

my research. But we face significant day-to-day obstacles as we try to dedicate ourselves to science. At most universities, policies governing postdocs’ working conditions and terms of employment are substandard or, more often, nonexistent. Our titles and employment arrangements vary, leaving us isolated and frequently at a loss when dealing with complicated human resources issues. Many of my f...

Does Parental Leave Affect Fertility and Return-to-Work? Evidence from a “True Natural Experiment” We study the causal effects of changes in parental leave provisions on fertility and return-towork behavior. We exploit a policy change that took place in 1990 in Austria which extended the maximum duration of parental leave from the child’s first to the child’s second birthday. As parental leave ...

This research considers an economic intervention i.e. a paid sick leave policy to control an Influenza epidemic. Research has shown that “presenteeism” i.e. sick workers coming to work, costs employers more than “absenteeism” because sick workers put their coworkers at risk and are less productive. We examined the costs and benefits of a paid sick leave policy through its effect on productivity...

Assumptions about the importance of mothers’ time for children’s healthy development permeate policy debates over child care, maternal employment, and family leave. Studies consistently show that mothers’ time in particular activities with children relate positively to indicators of child well-being, but results are more mixed regarding associations between child outcomes and the sheer amount o...

Improving employer support of work and family demands of the workforce is a growing concern across countries, but the pathways to achieve improvements in employer adoption of work-family policies, particularly linkages between collective bargaining and public policy, are not well understood within and across national contexts. In this article, we explore the linkage of collective bargaining and...