Working Papers

  • Can Paternity Leave Reduce the Gender Earnings Gap? (with Yaya Diallo and Fabian Lange)

    • Revise and resubmit, Journal of Labor Economics
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    This paper examines the impact of paternity leave uptake on the gender gap in labor market outcomes. Utilizing administrative data from Canadian tax records, we analyze Quebec’s 2006 parental leave reform, which introduced five weeks of paid leave exclusively to fathers and significantly increased fathers’ uptake of parental leave. Using mothers and fathers of children born around the reform, we estimate how the policy impacted labor market outcomes up to 10 years following birth. The reform significantly reduced fathers’ earnings immediately after birth. However, in the medium to long-run, we find that the reform did not impact earnings, employment, or the probability of being employed in a high-wage industry for either parent. We for instance find a 95%-CI for the effect on average female earnings 3-10 years following birth ranging from -2.2 to +1.7%. Estimates of effects on other outcomes and for males are similarly precise zeros. There is likewise no evidence that the reform differentially affected care-taking and family responsibilities in the treated population.

  • Small Seeds, Big Returns: Delivering Student Grants Through College Savings Accounts (with William Arbour and Fernando Saltiel)

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    We provide the first large-scale evidence on the effects of delivering student grants through college savings accounts. We study the Canada Learning Bond (CLB), a federal program that deposits up to $2,000 into the college savings accounts of children from low-income families, with funds accessible only upon college enrollment. Using administrative microdata and a difference-in-discontinuities design around the date-of-birth eligibility cutoff, we identify the causal effects of CLB eligibility and present four main results. First, half of eligible children receive CLB transfers into a college savings account. Second, CLB eligibility triggers a significant parental saving response, more than doubling the effects on savings relative to the grant transfer alone. Third, CLB eligibility raises bachelor’s degree enrollment by 4.6 percentage points. Fourth, bachelor’s degree enrollment also rises for older siblings who receive no direct grant but whose parents open accounts and save on their behalf. Together, these findings suggest that the design of financial aid matters: delivering grants through savings accounts can generate responses that amplify program impacts beyond the transfer itself.

Publications