Children and Career Interruptions: The Family Gap in Denmark (original) (raw)
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Child-related career interruptions and the gender wage gap in France
2011
In this paper, we investigate the extent of the effects of children and child-related time out of the labor market on the gender wage gap in France, with special attention to its impact on the accumulation and composition of human capital. Measuring this impact requires detailed information on the individuals‟ activity history that is rarely available. The French survey "Families
Social Science Research Network, 2001
This Discussion Paper is issued within the framework of IZA's research area The Welfare State and Labor Markets. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the institute. Research disseminated by IZA may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor markets, (2) internationalization of labor markets and European integration, (3) the welfare state and labor markets, (4) labor markets in transition, (5) the future of work, (6) project evaluation and (7) general labor economics. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character.
The effects of children on mothers' employment and earnings: evidence from Spain
2013
Using a large and rich data set from administrative sources, we study the effects of children on mothers' employment and earnings in Spain. By being able to pinpoint the event of multiple births along a twenty-year panel of women's work history, we address two methodological hurdles in this research: the omitted-variable problem and concerns about twins as a good instrument for family size. We find that the effects of fertility on mothers' labor outcomes differ by level of education. Women with only compulsory education experience falls of 17 percent in employment and 15 percent in earnings, increased duration of non-employed spells, and reductions in the likelihood of holding a secondary job or chaining contracts within a certain employment spell. Among more educated women, the employment rate drops by a mere 4 percent and earnings increase slightly in some cases. Nonetheless, a relatively higher employment rate of more educated mothers, besides unexpected changes in family size, involves costs in terms of working conditions, like holding temporary contracts. Our results indicate that mothers in general have a hard time regaining employment as revealed by the sharp increase in the take-up rate of unemployment insurance benefits around the third month after the birth. Finally, we are able to obtain some results for the impact of family size on the labor supply of a second earner (husband) in the household. For instance, we find that second earners tend to compensate for mothers' income diminution. Julio Cáceres Delpiano gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education (Grant ECO2009-11165). Both authors are grateful for financial support from the Department of Employment of the Madrid Autonomous Community. The usual disclaimers apply.
Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d`Economique, 2001
Why do Canadian mothers have lower incomes than women who have never had children? Microdata from the 1995 GSS allow examination of two hypotheses:~1! mothers have spent more time out of the labour force, thus acquiring less human capital;~2! higher levels of unpaid work lead to fatigue and0or scheduling difficulties. Measuring work history does little to account for the 'family gap.' The estimated child penalty is reduced by allowing for 'human capital depreciation' and controlling for unpaid work hours, but the two hypotheses together cannot entirely explain the gap. JEL Classification: J0, J3
Compatibility of children and work preferences: two European cases
2005
Nowadays female participation in the labor market and motherhood are competing and the conciliation between them can be solved in different ways. In this paper we analyze children and work preferences in two European countries with very different behaviour: Italy and France. Italy shares with Spain the lowest fertility level (the TFR is around 1.25) whereas French TFR reaches the highest level (1.89) among the European Community countries. Moreover female employment rate in Italy is about 40% whereas in France reaches 70%. In these two contexts, using data from the European Community Household Panel, we model jointly fertility and female participation in the labor market, taking into account the potential correlation across unobserved heterogeneity in children and work preferences.
The ability of markets to accommodate women's labor force transitions in connection to childbirth and to ease the trade-offs between work and childcare varies significantly within Europe. I use the 1994-2000 waves of the European Community Household panel to estimate both a logit and a multinomial logit model of the transitions in/out of the labor force, as well as into unemployment of women after births of different order across 13 countries. Models are estimated at 12 and 36 months after birth. At the individual level, I control for women's and spouse's personal (education) and employment characteristics (type/length of contract, sector). At the country level, institutional and economic differences across countries and regions (maternity benefits, size of government sector, typology of contracts, unemployment) are used. Results shed light on what factors contribute to balance childbearing with labor market activity.
Childbearing and the Labor Market: Time and Space Dynamics
Fertility is an important determinant of long-run population growth and labor market conditions. The present study focuses on the effects of time and space dynamics on the description of fertility in Sweden. The influence of time dynamics in postponing or accelerating childbearing was assessed by considering two different effects of earnings. Firstly, the effect within one generation was considered by comparing a family's current earnings with their earnings in the recent past and expected earnings in the future. The second effect, referred to previously as the Easterlin hypothesis, was examined through the generations by comparing a household's earnings for a younger generation with earnings of the parental generation. These effects were expected to be generated by labor mobility across municipalities. The empirical evidence for the period 1985-2008 involved estimating space and time dynamics by using a spatial first-order and serial secondorder panel data model. By comparing different specifications, the hypothesis about positive spatial autocorrelation of fertility was supported. Current earnings appeared to have a negative effect on fertility rates within municipalities, and in the long-run, across them. The study makes an important theoretical contribution through the application of stationarity conditions and evaluation of the long-run effects in the direct, indirect and total forms of the model.
In this paper we aim to study and compare the countries of the former EU-15 in terms of the difference in labour market conditions between mothers and non-mothers and we look at how public policies can be designed in order to minimise the employment penalties associated with the presence of young children and thus promote parenthood by working women. As women choose to take part in paid employment, fertility rates will depend on their possibilities to combine employment and motherhood. As a result, the motherhood-induced employment penalties discussed in this paper as well as the role of public policies should be given priority attention by politicians and policy-makers. Firstly, in this paper we start out from a multinomial logit model to analyse motherhood-induced employment gaps in the EU-15. Then, various decomposition techniques (the method of recycled prediction and the and technique adapted to the non-linear case) are applied to the computed gross FTE employment gaps between mothers and non-mothers to isolate the net employment effect associated with the presence of children from that of differences in characteristics between mothers and non-mothers. Special attention is also given to the specific role of education to contain the negative labour market consequences that derive from the presence of young children. It seems that differences in characteristics such as age, education and non labour personal income do not influence a lot the difference in employment status. Secondly, we use an OLS regression to confront motherhood-induced employment penalties with selfconstructed country-specific indicators of child policies, used as explanatory variables, in order to test the impact and effectiveness of policies of different design and generosity on these employment gaps that separate mothers of young children from non-mothers and mothers with grown up children. We round off our analysis by presenting a new typology and country-specific overview of the adjustment mechanisms applied by career-pursuing mothers on the labour market as well as of the supportiveness of different child policies. In the conclusion, we carefully review the main results of this research, advance a number of policy recommendations and suggest interesting avenues for future research.
Time is Money – The Influence of Parenthood Timing on Wages
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: