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Abstract: Japan has among the most generous parental leave statutes in the OECD, yet one of the widest motherhood employment gaps. Using an event-study design applied to 662 first births in the JHPS and KHPS panels (2004-2022), I show that this puzzle is rooted in labour-market segmentation. Employment falls 13.2 percentage points at childbirth, with a clean near-lead null at t=-2. The penalty is strongly stratified by labour-market tier: among women employed before birth, non-regular contract status predicts non-employment at t=0 with an odds ratio of 7.50 (p<0.001), while small-firm effects are positive but imprecise. Post-birth “recovery” is largely an extensive-margin illusion - returning mothers shift from full-time to part-time work, and conditional hours, earnings, and implied hourly wages remain durably below pre-birth levels. Government training subsidies designed to support re-entry are effectively unused, with fewer than 2.5% of mothers reporting utilisation at any post-birth horizon. These patterns are consistent with weaker effective access to job-continuity protections in non-regular and small-firm segments, and suggest that statutory entitlements alone may be insufficient where labour-market dualism channels mothers into employment tiers with limited institutional support.
Paper in its early stage can be viewed here, and a quick overview of main results here.
Abstract: Academic achievement is often modelled as a function of cognitive inputs alone, but this can obscure how behavioural skills interact with cognition across subjects and gender. Using the Growing Up in Ireland child cohort and Junior Certificate outcomes (n around 5,631 where available), I estimate linear models and two-input translog production functions for Maths and English. Cognitive skills are the dominant predictor in both subjects, with larger elasticities in Maths than English; noncognitive skills are smaller in magnitude but consistently relevant, especially when measured by focused behavioural traits (SDQ) rather than broad personality traits (TIPI). Elasticity-of-substitution estimates are below one in most specifications, indicating limited substitutability and broad complementarity between skill domains, with one subgroup exception (girls in Maths, TIPI) where substitutability exceeds one. The combined evidence indicates subject-specific and gender-differentiated skill production, with stability in sign and ranking across model classes. These results are descriptive rather than causal, but they suggest that policies targeting cognition alone are likely to underperform relative to integrated cognitive-behavioural strategies.
Paper in its early stage can be viewed here, and a quick overview of main results here.
Abstract: Ireland exhibits a persistent gender gap in later Maths achievement despite relatively modest early differences, raising the question of when and how the gap widens. Using the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions with predictors measured at ages 9 and 13, I show that the composition of the gap changes over development. Boys score about 4.4- 5.2 points higher than girls in Leaving Certificate Maths; at age 9, the gap is more strongly associated with coefficient differences (returns), while by age 13 endowment differences account for a larger share. Family structure is strongly associated with performance: students classified as father-absent score markedly lower on average (about 13.6 points for boys and 15.2 for girls), with gender differences in the relative roles of endowments and returns. Distributional decomposition shows that mean effects mask substantial heterogeneity, with the largest gap concentrated around the middle of the score distribution. A comparative English analysis yields a reversed gender gap, consistent with subject-specific differences in how characteristics are translated into outcomes. Estimates are descriptive and do not by themselves identify causal effects.