Tuesday, March 10, 2026 13:30 - 14:45

This event is both online and in person.

SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

Online participants are welcome:
Please sign up to our mailinglist (seminar_ceplab) to receive event updates and a link to the seminar online.

About this event

Persistent gender inequalities in the labor market, including the motherhood penalty, are closely linked to the unequal division of childcare within families. Despite the increasing availability of paternity leave policies worldwide, uptake remains low, with most fathers taking little or no leave. One potential explanation is that families perceive limited value in fathers spending time at home with their newborns. This paper investigates beliefs about the UK?s Shared Parental Leave (SPL) policy using a novel survey of a nationally representative sample of childbearing individuals. We find that individuals generally assign positive value to fathers taking leave, by reallocating a portion of the mother?s leave, across various outcomes related to the well-being of the mother, father, and child. A simple information intervention leads respondents to update their beliefs positively regarding the returns to paternal leave. However, belief updates only weakly affect policy support, charitable giving, and stated behavioral intentions. Responsiveness to the intervention is heterogeneous: parents, women, and individuals with more egalitarian gender norms show larger belief updates and greater changes in actual and hypothetical behavioral outcomes.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

Online participants are welcome:
Please sign up to our mailinglist (seminar_ceplab) to receive event updates and a link to the seminar online.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

Labour Markets Workshops are part of the CEP's Labour Markets programme.