The Impact of Child and Maternal Health Indicators on Female Labor Force Participation after Childbirth: Evidence for Germany

Annalena Dunkelberg and Katharina Spiess ()

No 686, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: This paper analyzes the influence of children's health and mothers' physical and mental well-being on female labor force participation after childbirth in Germany. Our analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, which enables us to measure chil-dren's health based on the occurrence of severe health problems including mental and physi-cal disabilities, hospitalizations, and preterm births. Since child health is measured at a very young age, we can rule out any of the reverse effects of maternal employment on child health identified in US studies. Within a two-year time period, we investigate the influence of these indicators on various aspects of female labor force participation after childbirth, including continuous labor force participation in the year of childbirth and the transition to employment in the year following childbirth. Since the majority of women in Germany do not go back to work within a year after childbirth, we also investigate their intention to return to work, and the preferred number of working hours. We find that the child's severe health problems have a significant negative effect on the mothers' labor force participation and a significant positive effect on her preferred number of working hours, but that hospitalizations or preterm births have no significant effect. For the mothers' own health, we find a significant negative effect of poor mental and physical wellbeing on female labor force participation within a year of child-birth. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study of this kind on data outside the US.

Keywords: Female labour supply; childhealth; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I19 J22 J23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 p.
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: The Impact of Child and Maternal Health Indicators on Female Labor Force Participation after Childbirth: Evidence from Germany (2007)
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