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Does Earmarked Paternity Leave Shape Gender Norms?

IMC Tuesday Seminar: Talk by Jakob Egholt Søgaard, assistant professor, Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI), Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 6 December 2022,  at 11:00 - 12:30

Location

Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, Aarhus C, building 1483, room 312 and online (https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/my/imcevent)

Jakob Egholt Søgaard

Abstract
Does public policies affect norms in society? Traditionally, economists have analyzed public policies almost exclusively through their effect on (economic) incentives, but in the context of child rearing, incentives appear to explain only a minor part of the behavior of parents (Kleven et al., 2019, 2021). Earmarked leave is explicitly motivated as a tool to change and overcome traditional gender norms in society. In this project, we ask to what extent earmarked leave affects parental norms, preferences and attitudes towards gender equality in the short and long run? Whether earmarked leave alleviates non-standard constrains such as concerns about breaking social norms and perceived career costs of leave? And whether earmarked leave imposes costs on parents due to, e.g., less flexibility in the parental leave system? We address these questions by combining rich register data with a population wide survey of beliefs and perceptions about gender norms and parental leave of new parents running across a two-year window around the introduction of earmarked leave in Denmark in August 2022. This presentation will report the first set of pre-reform results from the survey. 

Joint with
Henrik Kleven, Princeton University & CEBI
Camille Landais, London School of Economics
Anne Sophie Lassen, Copenhagen Business School
Philip Rosenbaum, Copenhagen Business School
Herdis Steingrimsdottir, Copenhagen Business School

About the speaker
Jakob Egholt Søgaard
Assistant professor
Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen