By exploiting the opening of the Öresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, we examine the impact of access to larger labor markets on wages and employment. We show that the bridge generated a substantial increase in the cross-country commuting behavior of Swedes and a 13.5% increase in the average wage of workers in the region. We further show that the wage gains are unevenly distributed: the effect is largest for high-educated men and smallest for low-educated women. Thus, the wage gains come at the cost of increased income inequality and a widening of the gender wage gap, both within and across households.

This paper studies the long-term and life cycle consequences of increasing access to mother and child health care centers in the first year of life. Access to these centers increased completed years of schooling by 0.15 years and earnings by 2%. These effects were stronger for children from a low socioeconomic background and contribute to a 10% reduction in the intergenerational persistence in educational attainment. Better nutrition within the first year of life is a likely mechanism. In particular, we find positive effects on adult height, fewer health risks at age 40, and decreased infant mortality from diarrhea.

We assess the case for generous government-funded maternity leave, focusing on a series of policy reforms in Norway that expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks. We find the reforms do not crowd out unpaid leave and that mothers spend more time at home without a reduction in family income. The increased maternity leave has little effect on children's schooling, parental earnings and labor force participation, completed fertility, marriage, or divorce. The expansions, whose net costs amounted to 0.25% of GDP, have negative redistribution properties and imply a considerable increases in taxes at a cost to economic efficiency.

Given the wide use of child care subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer-run outcomes. Using a sharp discontinuity in the price of child care in Norway, we are able to isolate the effects of child care subsidies on both parental and student outcomes. We find very small and statistically insignificant effects of child care subsidies on child care utilization and parental labor force participation. Despite this, we find significant positive effect of the subsidies on children's academic performance in junior high school, suggesting that the positive shock to disposable income provided by the subsidies may be helping to improve children's scholastic aptitude.