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The Effect of a Family Policy Reform on Mother’s Pay: A Natural Experiment Approach

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Abstract

All parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who do not attend publicly subsidised day care, are entitled to a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. Studies have shown that the reform has reduced mother’s labour supply. In this paper we analyse wage effects of the reform. We put forward a framework for evaluating reforms when reforms are uniformly and equally accessible nation-wide. First, running a simple Difference in differences (DD) analysis, results suggest that the CFC reform has reduced the mother’s wages. However, after controlling for “the age of the child” effect, by running a triple difference approach, we no longer find any evidence of negative wage effects.

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Correspondence to Pål Schøne.

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Schøne, P. The Effect of a Family Policy Reform on Mother’s Pay: A Natural Experiment Approach. Rev Econ Household 3, 145–170 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-005-0708-y

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