The impact of provincial maternity and paternal leave policies on employment rates of women with young children in Canada

With the implementation of the EI Act, the employment requirements were changed from a minimum number of weeks to a minimum number of hours of work in the year prior to M/PL. [...] Inherent in the structure of the legislation in Canada is the possibility of a lack of coordination between the federal and provincial governments. [...] The model requires the selection of a comparison (or control) group where differences in the employment probability between the control group and the group of interest are not correlated with the variation in the policy. [...] The difference in the changes in the outcomes of the two groups after changes in the legislation gives an estimate of the true effect of the legislation on the group of interest. [...] The probability of employment for all women with young children peaks at age 30 to 34 and is the lowest for the youngest and the oldest in the sample.