Project description
Evaluating gender-egalitarian parental leave schemes
Europe faces declining fertility rates and growing inequalities in early childhood. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PLED project will investigate the long-term impacts of maternity and paternity leave policies on child development and family dynamics. Using a structural life-cycle framework, PLED will evaluate how leave reforms influence fertility, employment and parental investment across different socio-economic groups. A key objective is assessing the introduction of earmarked paternity leave to promote gender-egalitarian schemes and understand their effects on child outcomes and household wages. By combining theoretical modelling and empirical analysis, the project aims to provide tools to design inclusive family policies and support EU strategic priorities regarding demographic sustainability and social equity, fostering more effective support for families.
Objective
This project investigates the long-term and distributional effects of paid leave (PL) policies—maternity leave (ML) and paternity leave (PTL)—on child development and family behavior. Motivated by Europe’s persistent fertility decline and widening early-life inequalities, the project develops a structural framework (PLED) to evaluate how PL reforms affect fertility, labor supply, and parental investment decisions over the life cycle, and how these effects vary across socio-economic groups.
The first objective is to provide a comprehensive framework to estimate the long-term and distributional effects of ML policies. This will be achieved by building a life-cycle model (PLED1) that captures interdependent decisions on fertility, maternal labor supply (including ML uptake), and parental investment across stages of childhood. The model will quantify the direct and indirect effects of ML policies on children’s skill formation while accounting for household heterogeneity in income and education. Initially calibrated to U.S. data, it is designed to be adaptable for policy analysis across EU countries.
The second objective is to provide a tool of analysis focused on the introduction of paternity leave. To achieve this, I will extend the model developed in PLED1 to account for earmarked PTL policies by modeling leave uptake decisions for both parents. This will result in a new model (PLED2), which allows the assessment of gender-egalitarian leave schemes and their effects on child outcomes and within-household wage dynamics.
By combining theoretical modeling, empirical calibration, and policy evaluation, the project will generate flexible tools to support the design of more inclusive, effective family policies aligned with the EU’s strategic priorities on demographic sustainability and social equity.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
08002 Barcelona
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.