Family Policy, Maternal Employment and Fertility Outcomes: Socio-economic Differentials in Uptake and Effects of Childcare & Parental Leave in Belgium.

The project consists of two major parts. The first part investigates gender and socio-economic differentials in the uptake of childcare and parental leave and investigates how uptake is associated to maternal employment. The second part investigates how policy uptake subsequently affects fertility outcomes. Our research addresses the question whether the small positive effects of childcare and parental leave on female employment and fertility are due to family policies being largely ineffective, or whether these weak effects are due to the fact that studies typically use aggregate indicators and fail to account for population heterogeneity in uptake and effects of family policies.

Keywords:FAMILY POLICY, GENDER, SOCIO-ECONOMIC RELATIONS

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Demography, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology