Katarina Kuske

I am on the 2025/26 job market.

JOB MARKET PAPER

Co-Parenting and Careers after Divorce

I investigate how joint physical custody affects parents’ labour market outcomes after divorce. Exploiting a custody reform in the Netherlands that encouraged joint physical custody and increased its uptake by 7.6 percentage points among parents with young children, I find that mothers who divorce after the reform experience a 0.8% wage decline in an intention-to-treat framework relative to those divorcing before the reform (10% LATE for compliers). This is driven by slower wage growth for mothers in the treatment group, who are less likely to move further away to access better-paid employment. The findings suggest that co-parenting ties both parents to a fixed location, reducing geographical mobility. Treated mothers also reduce their hours temporarily—largely due to rising overtime in the control group—while fathers’ wages and hours remain unaffected. The wage penalty is concentrated among mothers who were second earners during marriage and younger at the time of divorce. These patterns are consistent with gendered co-location during marriage, which makes the post-divorce location constraint under joint physical custody bind more tightly for mothers than fathers, thereby widening the gender wage gap. My results indicate an efficiency cost of location constraints under joint physical custody. 

OTHER WORKING PAPERS

• The Full Package: Measuring and Valuing a Broad Set of Workplace Amenities, with Minji Bang and Hanna Wang
• FDI and Remittances, with Simon Görlach

POLICY PUBLICATIONS

Temporary migration entails benefits, but also costs, for sending and receiving countries, IZA World of Labor 2022: 503, with Simon Görlach