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For Some Mothers More Than Others: How Children Matter for Labour Market Outcomes When Both Fertility and Female Employment Are Low

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  • Karbownik, Krzysztof

    (Emory University)

  • Myck, Michal

    (Centre for Economic Analysis, CenEA)

Abstract

We estimate the causal relationship between family size and labour market outcomes for families in low fertility and low female employment regime. Family size is instrumented using twinning and gender composition of the first two children. Among families with at least one child we identify the average causal effect of an additional child on mother's employment to be -7.1 percentage points. However, we find no effect of additional children on female employment among families with two or more kids. Heterogeneity analysis suggests no causal effects of fertility on female employment among mothers with less than college education and older mothers (born before 1978). Furthermore, we find evidence for the interaction of family size with maternal education and age. An unintuitive feature of our finding is that we identify a positive bias of OLS estimates for highly educated mothers and for mothers born after 1977.

Suggested Citation

  • Karbownik, Krzysztof & Myck, Michal, 2012. "For Some Mothers More Than Others: How Children Matter for Labour Market Outcomes When Both Fertility and Female Employment Are Low," IZA Discussion Papers 6933, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6933
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    2. Mahdi Majbouri, 2019. "Twins, family size and female labour force participation in Iran," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 387-397, January.
    3. Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2015. "She Cares and He Earns? The Family Gap in Poland," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 42.
    4. Krzysztof Karbownik & Michał Myck, 2016. "For some mothers more than others," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 24(4), pages 705-725, October.
    5. Majbouri, Mahdi, 2018. "Fertility and the Puzzle of Female Employment in the Middle East," IZA Discussion Papers 11322, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    family size; female employment; labour supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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