Taxes, Childcare, and Gender Identity Norms

We investigate the role of gender norms in shaping parental childcare followingchanges in the relative take-home pay of mothers and fathers. Exploiting variationfrom Swedish tax reforms, we estimate the elasticity of substitution in parental child-care for native and immigrant couples from a variety of countries characterized byvarying gender norms. Couples originating from countries with relatively conservativenorms are more likely to reallocate childcare to mothers following a reduction in thefather’s tax rate and less likely to reallocate childcare to fathers following a reductionin the mother’s tax rate, thereby reinforcing a traditional allocation of childcare acrossparents