TY - JOUR
T1 - Law, economics, and culture
T2 - Theory of mandated benefits and evidence from maternity leave policies
AU - Givati, Yehonatan
AU - Troiano, Ugo
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Why do some countries mandate a long maternity leave, while others mandate only a short one?We incorporate into a standard mandated-benefit model social tolerance of gender-based discrimination, showing that the optimal length of maternity leave depends on it. The less tolerant a society is of gender-based discrimination, the longer the maternity leave it will mandate. Relying on recent research in psychology and linguistics according to which patterns in languages offer a window into their speakers' dispositions, we collected new data on the number of gender-differentiated personal pronouns across languages to capture societies' attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. We first confirm, using within-country language variation, that our linguistic measure is correlated with attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. Then, using cross-country data on length of maternity leave, while controlling for other parameters, we find a strong correlation between our language-based measure of attitudes and the length of maternity leave.
AB - Why do some countries mandate a long maternity leave, while others mandate only a short one?We incorporate into a standard mandated-benefit model social tolerance of gender-based discrimination, showing that the optimal length of maternity leave depends on it. The less tolerant a society is of gender-based discrimination, the longer the maternity leave it will mandate. Relying on recent research in psychology and linguistics according to which patterns in languages offer a window into their speakers' dispositions, we collected new data on the number of gender-differentiated personal pronouns across languages to capture societies' attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. We first confirm, using within-country language variation, that our linguistic measure is correlated with attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. Then, using cross-country data on length of maternity leave, while controlling for other parameters, we find a strong correlation between our language-based measure of attitudes and the length of maternity leave.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84870209889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1086/663632
DO - 10.1086/663632
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:84870209889
SN - 0022-2186
VL - 55
SP - 339
EP - 364
JO - Journal of Law and Economics
JF - Journal of Law and Economics
IS - 2
ER -