Public Economics and Policy Seminar - Julius Ilciukas (University of Amsterdam)

I study how parenthood affects women’s labor market outcomes and gender inequality, using quasi-experimental variation in the success of assisted conception procedures. I introduce a method for bounding the effects under minimal assumptions by leveraging women’s complete assisted conception histories, simultaneously addressing selective fertility timing and timing-dependent effects. Using administrative Dutch data, I find sizable and persistent effects on women’s work hours and income, which account for up to half of post-child gender inequality in these outcomes. I also disentangle and quantify how selective timing and timing-dependent effects bias conventional estimators, providing insight into the conflicting findings in the literature. My approach is applicable to other settings where individuals are quasi-experimentally assigned to one state but may enter others either through direct selection or by opting into quasi-experimental reassignment.