December 16, 2013 | News

Congratulations!

Former MPIDR-researcher Esther Geisler has successfully defended her dissertation at the University of Rostock. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the influence of welfare state policies on parental employment patterns, drawing on data from the German Microcensus and the British Labour Force Survey.

Esther Geisler analyzed the employment behavior of mothers in eastern and western Germany and in Great Britain, focusing on labor market reforms in both countries.

The results show that the labor market participation of mothers is strongly related to marital status. They also reveal country-specific differentials: In Great Britain, it is most notably lone mothers who have a low employment rate.

In western Germany, the  share of employed married mothers has increased between 1996 and 2008. However, they mostly worked in part-time jobs, very often in short part-time jobs.

In eastern Germany, by contrast, the labor market participation among married mothers is higher than it is among unmarried lone parents, and the situation is similar to Great Britain. According to Esther Geisler, several possible reasons account for these differences: The British government was relatively hesitant in providing financial incentives to encourage lone mothers to look for jobs. Also, child care is generally very expensive in Great Britain.

In western Germany, the higher share of working lone mothers is more likely to be rooted in family policy: In contrast to married women, there are no incentives for unmarried women that would encourage them not to work (such as the so-called “income splitting“, a married couples tax allowance). Eastern Germany has the same incentives for married women, but apparently these do not have the same effect as the labor market situation is very difficult in this region.

Esther Geisler also showed that the activating labor market policies and the in-work  benefits introduced by the British New Labour government  resulted in increased employment participation of lone mothers. In western Germany, the employment participation of married and lone mothers saw a moderate rise following the Hartz IV-reform  whereas no effects could be found for eastern Germany.

Esther Geisler worked at the MPIDR from October 2006 to July 2013. Now she is a research scientist at the Institute for Sociology and Demography at the University of Rostock.