Essays on the impact of maternity leave policy and educational policy on the labor market outcomes of workers

This dissertation is composed of two chapters that explore the labor market outcomes of the policy: Chapter I about the maternity leave policy in the United States and Chapter II about the college education expansion policy in South Korea.; Chapter I investigates the effects of maternity leave benefit on the labor market outcomes of mothers with newborn babies. Until the FMLA (The Family and Medical Leave Act) has passed in 1993, the general policy approach towards maternity leave was to attempt to increase the number of employees with maternity leave coverage by legislative mandates. Existing literature, therefore, examines whether the implementation of a certain mandates was efficient by showing that there was no disemployment effect on the benefited group. Chapter I provides an argument in favor of this approach by showing that existing maternity leave programs seem to benefit the women they covered.; I estimate the effect of maternity leave benefit after controlling for substantial intrinsic differences between maternity leave covered workers and uncovered workers. The fixed effects estimation method is used to analyze the wage effect. Also, more explanatory variables are added to designate heterogeneity for the analysis of the turnover and employment effects.; The results of the Chapter I support the hypothesis that maternity leave coverage is beneficial on women's labor market outcomes. Maternity leave significantly lessens turnover one year after childbirth, and is closely related with higher employment one or two year after childbirth. Also, it is found that women who had a covered job maintain steeper wage profiles before after childbirth.; Chapter II explores the effects of the college education expansion policy on wages and employment during the 1980s and the 1990s in South Korea, including a sudden increase in the college entrance quota in 1981.; First, changes in the returns to the college education before and after a large increase in the quota in 1981 are explored by using the difference-in-difference method. Second, a time series analysis provides the overall impact of the college education expansion policy. The estimation results of the reduced form equation indicates that the relative wages and employment of all workers including both young and old responds to the policy with the time lag. Third, analysis of the determinants of college enrollment shows that the declining wages of college graduates may have discouraged the college enrollment, after controlling for trend and the first order autocorrelation. It implies that the market incentives are still working in private decisions to enroll in college in South Korea where the government has regulated the behavior of college enrollment.