IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/gbjt5_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Single and partnered mothers’ labour market consequences of long family leave

Author

Listed:
  • Morosow, Kathrin
  • Jalovaara, Marika

Abstract

This study examines the heterogenous labour market effects of family leave policies for single and partnered mothers. Longer family leave has been shown to weaken women’s labour market positions and some studies have found heterogenous effects across population groups. However, whether the effect differs by partnership status remains unexplored. Using Finnish register data from 1989 to 2014 (ca. 2.5 million person-years) and controlling for selection into single motherhood by comparing estimates from OLS and FE models, this study compares single and patnered mothers’ unemployment and earnings consequent to extended family leaves. In line with predictions that single mothers may face greater work-family reconciliation issues or cumulative disadvantage leading to greater labour market penalties, the results showed that longer leave increases the length of unemployment for single mothers more than for partnered ones. This is not solely because of selection into single motherhood. Earnings penalties after family leave (net of employment status) are the same for single and partnered mothers. We conclude that similar long- lengths of family leave are penalised more among single mothers in terms of employment, which increases and reproduces social inequalities. This means that existing inequalities are reinforced by labour market absences supported by leave policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Morosow, Kathrin & Jalovaara, Marika, 2025. "Single and partnered mothers’ labour market consequences of long family leave," SocArXiv gbjt5_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:gbjt5_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/gbjt5_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/680f7c31bafd24b6809fde98/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/gbjt5_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:gbjt5_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.