The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in major declines in employment of women. We provide projections of impacts of this reduction on less educated women’s future human capital framed within the traditional Mincerian model. We find that wage losses one year out from 2020 are relatively modest on average, generally less than 1%, with the largest for married women without children in the home. But losses are greater for young married women, mothers with very young children, and those working in COVID-impacted industries. School and childcare closures increase negative wage impacts for married mothers by an additional 50%.

We explore how much borrowers value student debt relief in the setting of the federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness program, which cancels between $5,000 and $17,500 in debt for teachers at high-need schools. Using both quasi-experimental evidence and a randomized controlled trial, we find that neither eligibility nor a targeted information intervention affects employment decisions. Information was found to increase application and receipt rates for teachers who had achieved eligibility. Evidence from contingent valuation surveys suggests that teachers do in general value debt relief. Incorporating qualitative evidence, we conclude that take-up may be constrained by program complexity and administrative barriers.

We estimate the effect of a female employee giving birth and taking parental leave on small firms and coworkers in Denmark using a dynamic difference-in-differences design. We find little evidence that parental leave take-up has negative effects on firms and coworkers overall. This is because most firms are very effective in compensating for the worker on leave by hiring temporary workers and by increasing other employees’ hours. In contrast, we do find evidence that parental leave has negative effects on a small subsample of firms that are less able to use their existing employees to compensate for absent workers.