Austria's 60 years of policy experimentation: Our results show that the enormous expansions of parental leave and child care subsidies have had virtually no impact on gender convergence

Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation. Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais, Johanna Posch, Andreas Steinhauer & Josef Zweimüller. NBER WP 28082, November 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/w28082

Abstract: Do family policies reduce gender inequality in the labor market? We contribute to this debate by investigating the joint impact of parental leave and child care, using administrative data covering the labor market and birth histories of Austrian workers over more than half a century. We start by quasi-experimentally identifying the causal effects of all family policy reforms since the 1950s on the full dynamics of male and female earnings. We then map these causal estimates into a decomposition framework a la Kleven, Landais and Søgaard (2019) to compute counterfactual gender gaps. Our results show that the enormous expansions of parental leave and child care subsidies have had virtually no impact on gender convergence.

Paying attention to alternative partners seems associated with engaging in behaviors that undermine relationship fidelity or stability: Monitoring was higher for those who broke up and for those who reported infidelity

Romantic alternative monitoring increases ahead of infidelity and break-up. Lane L. Ritchie et al. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, November 15, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520968633

Abstract: Monitoring alternative partners may be associated with engaging in behaviors that undermine relationship fidelity and/or stability. For example, paying attention to romantic alternatives has been shown to be associated with lower relationship quality. Studies have investigated the association between alternative monitoring and relationship outcomes, but with significant methodological limitations. This study aims to longitudinally explore whether and how alternative monitoring is associated with infidelity and break-up. Participants were 779 individuals drawn from a longitudinal sample of individuals in unmarried different-sex relationships. As hypothesized, alternative monitoring was higher for those who broke up and for those who reported infidelity, compared to those who remained together without infidelity. Additionally, consistent with predictions, increases in alternative monitoring preceded break-up, and particularly large increases in alternative monitoring preceded infidelity, compared to trajectories for those who remained together and did not report infidelity. Results highlight the importance of measuring change in alternative monitoring over time, rather than only considering mean differences at a single timepoint. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.

Keywords: Alternative monitoring, break-up, commitment, infidelity, psychology