Thema Gender

The Situation is Serious, but Not Hopeless - Evidence-Based Considerations on the Intra-Couple Division of Childcare before, during and after the Covid-19 Lockdown

Drawing on data from the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) for 2018, we use a sample of 2,145 heterosexual couples with children below age 13 to investigate the paternal involvement in domestic childcare and the relation of the underlying mechanisms to the two job-related “Covid-19 factors” systemic relevance (SR) and capacity to work from home (WfH). Based on bi- and trivariate analyses of the intra-couple ...

Kinderbetreuung in Corona-Zeiten: Mütter tragen die Hauptlast, aber Väter holen auf

Die coronabedingten Schließungen von Schulen und Kinderbetreuungsein-richtungen im April und Mai 2020 haben viele Eltern vor eine immense Herausforderung gestellt. Plötzlich mussten Kinder ganztags zu Hause betreut und beschult werden. Wie aktuelle Ergebnisse der SOEP-CoV-Studie zeigen, lag die Hauptlast der Kinderbetreuung während des Lockdowns bei den Müttern. Gleichzeitig investierten die Väter ...

Coronavirus & Care: How the Coronavirus Crisis Affected Fathers’ Involvement in Germany

Background: As a response to the spread of the coronavirus in Germany, day care centres and schools closed nationwide, leaving families to grapple with additional child care tasks. In Germany, as in many other societies, women shoulder the lion’s share of housework and child care responsibilities. While the gendered division of household labour has shifted in recent years as men have become more engaged ...

Fertility as a Driver of Maternal Employment

Based on findings from high-income countries, typically economists hypothesize that having more children unambiguously decreases the time mothers spend in the labor mar- ket. Few studies on lower-income countries, in which low household wealth, informal child care, and informal employment opportunities prevail, find mixed results. Using Mexican census data, I find a positive effect of an instrument-induced ...

Systemrelevant, aber dennoch kaum anerkannt: Entlohnung unverzichtbarer Berufe in der Corona-Krise unterdurchschnittlich

In Zeiten der Corona-Krise zeigt sich: Bestimmte Berufsgruppen und Bereiche des öffentlichen und sozialen Lebens sind systemrelevant. 1 Die Mehrheit der als systemrelevant definierten Berufe weist jedoch außerhalb von Krisenzeiten ein geringes gesellschaftliches Ansehen und eine unterdurchschnittliche Bezahlung auf. Der Frauenanteil ist hingegen überdurchschnittlich. Dies gilt vor allem für die systemrelevanten ...

Time to Care? The Effects of Retirement on Informal Care Provision

This paper analyzes the impact of women's retirement on their informal care provision. Using SOEP data, we address fundamental endogeneity problems by exploiting variation in the German pension system in two complementary ways. We find a significant effect of retirement on informal care provision, when using early retirement age thresholds as instruments. Heterogeneity analyses confirm the underlying ...

Familienleben in Corona-Zeiten: Ergebnisbericht, Version: 05 Juni 2020

Suddenly a Stay-At-Home Dad? Short- and Long-term Consequences of Fathers’ Job Loss on Time Investment in the Household

Commonly described as the “gender care gap”, there is a persistent gender difference in the division of domestic responsibilities in most developed countries. We provide novel evidence on the short- and long-run effects of an exogenous shock on paternal availability, through a job loss, on the allocation of domestic work within couples. We find that paternal child care and housework significantly increase ...

Agents of Socialization and Female Migrants’ Employment: The Influence of Mothers and the Country Context

Women around the world are on the move but find it difficult to secure jobs. Employment is vital for migrant integration as it affords financial security, autonomy in the family and helps to establish social contacts. Besides human capital, previous research has looked into ethnic origin and specific source country aspects as drivers of female migrant employment. By contrast, ideas of adolescence as ...

Bessere Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Pflege kann Zielkonflikt zwischen Renten- und Pflegepolitik lösen

Pflegebedürftige lassen sich bevorzugt von Angehörigen oder FreundInnen zuhause pflegen. Dieser sogenannten informellen Pflege wird auch im Gesetz Vorrang vor formeller, stationärer Pflege eingeräumt. Für viele Angehörige entsteht jedoch ein Zeitkonflikt zwischen der Pflegearbeit und ihrer Erwerbsarbeit. Dieser Bericht zeigt, dass Frauen den Übergang in den Ruhestand nutzen, um diesen Zielkonflikt ...