When women work, children thrive: Gender-specific employment shocks and child abuse deaths

This study examines how gender-specific labor market opportunities affect child welfare, focusing on fatal child maltreatment. Using Japan’s comprehensive vital statistics and a shift-share identification strategy exploiting differential regional exposure to national industry employment shocks (2005-2018), we find striking opposite effects by gender. A 0.5% point increase in male employment growth increases child abuse deaths by 116%, while the same increase in female employment growth reduces these deaths by 93%. We identify maternal mental health as a key mechanism, with male employment growth correlating with deteriorating maternal well-being, while female employment opportunities improve women’s psychological health. Effects are most pronounced among the vulnerable with lower socioeconomic status — precisely those most susceptible to economic shocks. Our findings reveal that aggregate employment policies can mask offsetting gender-specific effects with profound consequences for child welfare. The results suggest that targeted interventions enhancing women’s economic opportunities could simultaneously reduce child maltreatment and advance gender equality. More broadly, this research demonstrates the critical importance of gender-disaggregated analysis in economic policy design, as standard employment measures may conceal significant distributional effects on family welfare.