GENDER, FAMILY AND LABOR SUPPLY

Time of the defense : January 6 at 3 pm

Thesis director :
Dominique Meurs, University Professor

Members of the Jury :
Bertrand Garbinti, Professor Ensae-Crest (rapporteur)
Eric Maurin, Director of Studies EHESS-PSE
Roland Rathelot, Professor Ensae-Crest
Anne Solaz, Director of Research Ined (rapporteur)

Summary of the thesis :
This dissertation investigates the effect of family life on labor supply in the French context through an empirical lens. It consists of four independent chapters, each devoted to a specific aspect of the impact of family life on decisions to allocate time to work outside the home. The first contributes to the recent literature on the effect of fertility on mothers' earnings and labor supply by assessing the heterogeneity of these effects along the distribution of their potential wages. The second examines whether increasing the availability of affordable childcare provided by publicly subsidized daycare centers, and thus lowering the implicit cost of working outside the home, allows parents, and in particular mothers of young children, to increase their labor supply and earnings. The third focuses on the impact of family life on health care systems, and quantifies the contribution of parenthood to the decline in nurses' labor supply over their careers. Finally, the last chapter explores how a sudden and persistent disruption, in this case the layoff of one of the adults in the family, affects the structure of within-family comparative advantage and spills over into the family relationships and labor supply of the other members.

Keywords : Gender inequality, family labor supply, childcare, nursing, job displacement.​