Abstract Parental leave and child care are important instruments of family policies to improve work–family balance. This paper studies the impact of the substantial change in Germany’s parental leave system on maternal employment. The aim of the reform was to decrease birth-related maternal employment breaks by providing more generous parental benefits for a shorter period of time. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel data for 2002–2015, I exploited quasi-experimental variation in the benefits to estimate the impact of the reform. I incorporated the mother’s decision to substitute her care time with the public child care. To control for the availability of child care, I used spatial and temporal variation in the availability of childcare slots. Overall, I did not find significant changes in maternal employment during the first three years of motherhood after the reform implementation. Only for high-income mothers, the reform produced a significant decrease in the employment participation during the first year of leave and an increase in employment probability after the benefits expired. The empirical findings suggest that the restriction in the childcare availability became an important constraint for the employment effect of the reform.

中文翻译：

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育儿假政策对育儿和就业行为的影响：以德国为例

摘要育儿假和育儿是家庭政策中改善工作与家庭平衡的重要手段。本文研究了德国育儿假制度的实质性变化对孕产妇就业的影响。改革的目的是通过在较短的时间内提供更多慷慨的父母福利来减少与生育相关的产妇就业中断。利用2002-2015年德国社会经济专家小组的数据，我利用了准实验性的福利差异来估算改革的影响。我采纳了母亲决定用公共儿童保育代替她的护理时间的决定。为了控制托儿服务的可用性，我在托儿服务位置的可用性中使用了时空变化。全面的，在改革实施之后的孕产的头三年，我没有发现孕产妇就业方面的重大变化。仅对高收入母亲而言，这项改革使休假第一年的就业参与显着减少，而福利期满后，就业机会却增加了。实证结果表明，托儿服务的限制成为了改革就业效果的重要制约因素。