Tapio Räsänen - Homepage

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tapio.rasanen@kela.fi

Hi, welcome to my homepage! I’m a senior researcher at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Kela, and a Ph.D. in economics from Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics. I also work as a project research in FLUX (Family Formation in Flux – Causes, Consequences and Possible Futures) at Åbo Akademi University.

My research interests include family policies and their (sometimes unintended) effects. For example, how parental leaves and childcare subsidies affect families’ choices. I also study how childbirth affects earnings, the wage gap between women and men, and gender differences in the labor market.

Research fields and interests:

Labour Economics, Family Economics, Population Economics
Health Economics, Public Economics

Contact me at tapio.rasanen@kela.fi

news

Aug 29, 2023	My doctoral dissertation is published! I succesfully defended my doctoral dissertation, Empirical Studies on Family Economics, at JSBE Link to release (in Finnish).
Mar 31, 2023	Date is set: I defend my doctoral dissertation in Economics “Empirical Studies on Family Economics” next August: Link to JSBE calendar.
Dec 17, 2022	Follow me at Mastodon
Dec 15, 2022	Homepages are almost complete!

selected publications

Back to work or stay at home? Family policies and maternal employment in Finland

Eva Österbacka, and Tapio Räsänen

Journal of Population Economics Jul 2022

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The employment effects of family policies depend on the mother’s labor market attachment and on the age of the child. We study the effects of child home care (cash-for-care) and private day care allowances on mothers’ return to employment after childbirth. Our identification strategy exploits changes in municipal-level subsidies. We find that higher private day care allowances have no effect while higher home care allowances increase the length of home care. A 100-euro higher level of home care allowance prolongs home care by 2–3 months, on average. The home care allowance combined with low labor market attachment and low earnings potential pre-birth delay the return to employment. However, the effect of the allowance diminishes over time. Higher subsidies have no impact by the time a child turns two. Reductions in subsidies stimulate a faster return to employment.
The gendered impacts of the Covid-19 crisis in Finland and the effectiveness of the policy responses

Merita Mesiäislehto, Anna Elomäki, Johanna Närvi, Miska Simanainen, and 2 more authors

Jul 2022

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This paper presents the first findings of the project The impact of the Covid-19 crisis in Finland (VN TEAS) and provides first evidence on the gendered impacts of the pandemic and effectiveness of the policy responses in Finland.
The Association Between Gendered Workplaces and the Length of Childcare Leave

Eva Österbacka, and Tapio Räsänen

Finnish Yearbook of Population Research May 2024

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Previous research indicates that mothers base the length of their childcare leave on individual opportunity costs. While workplace dynamics and peer influences may affect the duration of the leave, empirical evidence remains inconclusive. This study investigates the association between childcare leave length and workplace characteristics, as well as peer influences in the Finnish institutional context. In Finland, mothers can extend their earnings-related childcare leave with a flat-rate home care allowance until their child turns three years old. At the same time, they are entitled to subsidised day care, allowing them to choose the length of their childcare leave. Our results show that, in the gender-segregated Finnish labour market, the length of childcare leave among mothers varies based on employment sector, number of employees, peers’ leave length, and the share of women in the workplace.
Subsidizing private childcare in a universal regime

Tapio Räsänen, and Eva Österbacka

Review of Economics of the Household Mar 2024

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All families in Finland have the freedom to choose between subsidized home care, universal public childcare, and private childcare. We study the impact of the introduction of private childcare subsidies in Finland. Private childcare subsidies have causal effects on take-up but no impact on home care or employment among women with small children. Instead, private services seem to crowd out public childcare. Private services have a socioeconomic gradient by mother’s education that steepens when the subsidy increases. Families’ preferences between home care, public childcare, and private childcare do not explain the result.