Work in progress

The Hidden Child Penalty

(Draft available soon.)

Abstract: Children drive gender inequality in the labor market, yet most research focuses on mothers who reduce work hours or exit employment. In this paper, I study households where both partners remain full time employed after having their first child. I find that women, despite unchanged earnings and labor supply, increase housework by three hours per week, are primarily responsible for childcare, and experience a larger decline in leisure compared to men. Men do not adjust on any margin. Examining whether gender role beliefs can explain the pattern, I find that the households are more gender liberal with respect to women’s labor market participation, highlighting a disconnect between norms in the home and the labor market.

Partial Disability Insurance

with Andreas Haller,  Amalie Jensen, and Jakob Søgaard  

Abstract: To curb the rising costs of disability insurance (DI) programs, some countries have implemented partial DI programs, which require recipients to work part time to receive benefits. However, the welfare implications of such programs remain unclear. The analysis in this paper is twofold. First, we introduce a conceptual framework that identifies the central tradeoffs between partial DI programs, full DI programs, and ordinary employment. Second, we study a reform in Denmark that expanded the Danish partial DI program. We find that the reform substantially altered selection into the program by shifting individuals who would otherwise have entered the full DI program into the partial DI program. At the same time, we find no evidence of negative selection from ordinary employment. However, existing partial DI participants work fewer hours when starting new spells, suggesting that imperfect screening entails efficiency costs.

Policy articles

Løn under forældreorlov (in Danish)

with Jakob Søgaard

Samfundsøkonomen, 2024(3), p. 41–50.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/samfundsokonomen.v2024i3.148899