The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis that after leaving the educational system, labour market integration has a causal effect on first-birth decisions. The analysis focuses on two major research questions: First, how is the timing of first parenthood associated with previous labour market performance? Second, can differences in first birth-risks be related to labour market performance? ...
We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from rich to poor, they should favour mixed over pure public provision, but if public provision redistributes from ...
The accumulation of the human capital stock plays a key role to explain the macroeconomic performance across regions. However, despite the strong theoretical support for this claim, empirical evidence has been not very convincing, probably because of the low quality of the data. This paper provides a robustness analysis of alternative measures of human capital available at the level of EU NUTS1 and ...
In 2006 about 155 000 Germans left their country - more than ever before apart from the postwar wave of emigration in the 1950s. However, many recent German emigrants return to their home country. Although the question of why this rise has occurred is now arousing much attention from the general public and in research, comprehensive analyses have not so far been possible owing to the lack of an adequate ...
When estimating the determinants of child care participation, the simultaneity in mothers' decision to work and in the decision to use child care is a major challenge. In this study, we provide evidence on the determinants of institutional child care use accounting for the endogeneity of mothers' labor supply by applying an instrumental variables approach. This endogeneity has been neglected in studies ...
Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve "equality of opportunity", i.e. to guarantee all pupils equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that Germany features particularly low intergenerational mobility with respect to educational attainment. This study investigates the development in intergenerational ...
