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What does the stork bring to women's working career?

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  • Lia Pacelli
  • Silvia Pasqua
  • Claudia Villosio

Abstract

We analyse the effects of motherhood on women's working career using WHIP, a database that records individual work histories together with childbearing events. In this paper, we model working women's labour supply after childbirth for explaining why some women exit the labour market after childbirth and what are the individual characteristics that make exit more likely. For those working mothers remaining in the labour market we try to identify the working conditions that result in a wage penalty with respect to non-working women. It emerges a significant increase in the probability of transition from employment to non-employment for new mothers, mitigated by the availability of part time jobs. It also emerges that conditional average wages of future mothers are significantly higher than that of non mothers before childbearing and it becomes significantly lower afterward, showing no sign of a closing gap after 4 years. This penalty does not emerge for mothers moving to a part time job after childbearing.

Suggested Citation

  • Lia Pacelli & Silvia Pasqua & Claudia Villosio, 2007. "What does the stork bring to women's working career?," CHILD Working Papers wp16_07, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpc:wplist:wp16_07
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    Cited by:

    1. Del Bono, Emilia & Vuri, Daniela, 2011. "Job mobility and the gender wage gap in Italy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 130-142, January.
    2. Laura Cavalli, 2012. "Fertility Intentions of Employed Mothers in Italy: Does the Choice of Public versus Private Sector Matter?," Working Papers 27/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    3. Emilia Del Bono & Daniela Vuri, 2008. "Job mobility and the gender wage gap," Working Papers - Dipartimento di Economia 7-DEISFOL, Dipartimento di Economia, Sapienza University of Rome, revised 2008.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    motherhood; employment transitions; wage penalty; career;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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