TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Huebener, Mathias
AU  - Jessen, Jonas
AU  - Kühnle, Daniel
AU  - Oberfichtner, Michael
        TI  - Parental Leave, Worker Substitutability, and Firms' Employment
        PY  - 2024/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 16843
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp16843
        AB  - Motherhood and parental leave are frequent causes of worker absences and employment interruptions, yet we know little about their effects on firms. Based on linked employer-employee data from Germany, we examine how parental leave absences affect small- and medium-sized firms. We show that they anticipate the absence with replacement hirings in the six months before childbirth. A 2007 parental leave reform extending leave absences reduces firm-level employment and total wages in the first year after childbirth, driven by firms with few internal substitutes for the absent mother. However, we do not find longer-term effects on firms' employment, wage-bill, or likelihood to shut down. We find that the reform increases replacement hirings, but firms directly affected do not respond to longer expected absences of mothers by subsequently hiring fewer young women. Overall, our findings show that extended parental leave does not have a lasting impact on firms when these can anticipate the absences.
        KW  - worker absences
KW  - worker substitutability
KW  - parental leave
        ER  -