Peer effects at work on parental leave: Why is Papa not more involved?

Abstract

We estimate the peer effects of paternity leave‐taking among male co‐workers using the 2006 Quebec paternity leave reform. Using high‐quality administrative data, we closely follow the birth date regression discontinuity research design of Dahl et al. (2014) who studied a similar reform in Norway in 1993 which resembles the Quebec reform. Depending on the length of follow‐up, we estimate that having a male co‐worker take paternity leave increases the probability that a father of a newborn takes leave by 3 to 6 percentage points. While the statistical significance of our findings differ from Dahl et al. (2014) using Norwegian data, these estimates are nevertheless consistent with the 11 percentage point increase they report.