Fatherhood is costly!

"The Impact of Paternity Leave on Long-Term Father Involvement"

CESifo Working Paper Series No. 3130

MARI REGE, University of Stavanger
Email: mari.rege@uis.no
INGEBORG F. SOLLI, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: ingeborg.f.solli@uis.no

Using Norwegian registry data we investigate how paternity leave affects fathers' long-term earnings. In 1993 Norway introduced a paternity quota of the paid parental leave. We estimate a difference-in-differences model which exploits differences in fathers' exposure to the paternity quota. Our analysis suggests that four weeks paternity leave during the child's first year decreases fathers' future earnings by 2.1 percent. Importantly, this effect persists up until our last point of observation when the child is five years old. The earnings effect is consistent with increased long-term father involvement, as fathers shift time and effort from market to home production. In an investigation of Norwegian time use data we find additional evidence for this hypothesis.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Applied relativity (or, what to call your cousin)

My old friend Don answers the question in my post from yesterday about the naming of cousins:

"Imagine the family as a tree (computer science, not biology), with the common ancestor as the root and only two branches of interest, one leading to each cousin. Assume the two branches have depths X and Y, where X <= Y. The two people are (X-1)th cousins, (Y-X) times removed. For you and Captain Thom X=2 (the distance from you to your grandmother) and Y=3 (he's a generation farther down). You're first (2-1) cousins, once (3-2) removed.

That is good to know, and now that it is on the blog I will always know where to find it.

Afghanistan

Captain Thom, who appears in the latter part of the video, is my mother's sister's son's son. I am never quite sure if that makes him a second cousin or a first cousin once removed. In any case, I have a picture from when I was in college of me holding him when he was about two. Neither of us looks very happy about the arrangement.