育儿假是否会给企业和同事带来成本？

中文摘要

关于家庭休假政策有效性的现有证据大多来自考察其对受影响家庭——即母亲、父亲及其子女——影响的研究，而对企业和同事所承担的成本及受到的影响尚缺乏清晰认识。我们使用丹麦数据，评估员工生育并休假对企业和同事的影响。采用动态双重差分设计，我们将一名女性员工即将生育的小型企业，与一组在可观测特征上相当、但女性员工并非临近生育的小型企业进行比较。识别依赖于平行趋势假设，我们通过一系列自然有效性检验为该假设提供支持。员工生育后平均离开所在企业休假9.5个月。企业通过在多个维度增加劳动投入作出应对，使得对总工作时长的净影响接近于零。企业的工资总额因员工休假而增加，但这完全由支付给休假员工、且企业可获得报销的工资所驱动。企业产出、盈利能力或存续均未受到可测量的影响。最后，休假女性的同事在工作时长、收入和就业概率方面出现暂时性上升，但以病假天数衡量的工作幸福感未发生显著变化。总体而言，我们的结果表明，员工休育儿假给其企业和同事带来的成本可以忽略不计。

Abstract

Most of the existing evidence on the effectiveness of family leave policies comes from studies focusing on their impacts on affected families – that is, mothers, fathers, and their children – without a clear understanding of the costs and effects on firms and coworkers. We use data from Denmark to evaluate the effect on firms and coworkers when a worker gives birth and goes on leave. Using a dynamic difference-in-differences design, we compare small firms in which a female employee is about to give birth to an observationally equivalent sample of small firms with female employees who are not close to giving birth. Identification rests on a parallel trends assumption, which we substantiate through a set of natural validity checks. When an employee gives birth she goes on leave from her firm for 9.5 months on average. Firms respond by increasing their labor inputs along several margins such that the net effect on total work hours is close to zero. Firms' total wage bill increases in response to leave take up, but this is driven entirely by wages paid to workers on leave for which firms receive reimbursement.There are no measurable effects on firm output, profitability or survival. Finally, coworkers of the woman going on leave see temporary increases in their hours, earnings, and likelihood of being employed but experience no significant changes in well-being at work as proxied by sick days. Overall, our results suggest that employees going on parental leave impose negligible costs on their firm and coworkers.