Essays on family policies and employment in Europe.

Summary This thesis proposes four contributions on family policies and their links with mothers' employment in Europe. After an introductory Chapter 1, Chapter 2 presents the different issues and mechanisms of family policies in Europe. Chapter 3 focuses on the comparison of European countries according to the characteristics of their family policy system. Chapter 4 focuses on the factors influencing the labor supply of mothers in Europe. Finally, Chapter 5 looks at the determinants of the demand for different types of childcare services. Thus, after having defined and presented European family policies in a global way in the second chapter, we highlight the heterogeneity of these programs in Europe and propose a classification method in the third chapter. In the fourth chapter we test the effect of individual characteristics, family policies and gender norms on mothers' labour supply before concluding by focusing on one type of policy, namely childcare and the link with mothers' employment.