Maternal Labor Supply: Perceived Returns, Constraints, and Social Norms

Teodora Boneva, Marta Golin, Katja Kaufmann and Christopher Rauh

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: We provide representative evidence on the perceived returns to maternal labor supply. A mother's decision to work is perceived to have sizable impacts on child skills, family outcomes, and the mother's future labor market outcomes. Beliefs about the impact of additional household income can account for some, but not all, of the perceived positive effects. We further document labor supply intentions under different policy scenarios related to childcare availability and quality, two factors that are perceived as important. Finally, we show that perceived returns are predictive of labor supply intentions, over and above what can be explained by other factors.

Keywords: Subjective Expectations; Maternal Labor Supply; Childcare; Beliefs; Child Penalties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I26 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-neu
Note: cr542
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pub ... pe-pdfs/cwpe2138.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Maternal labor supply: Perceived returns, constraints, and social norms (2021)
Working Paper: Maternal Labor Supply: Perceived Returns, Constraints, and Social Norms (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:2138

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer ().