Effect of early parenthood on parents' earnings in the Baltics

Nerijus Cerniauskas
Additional contact information
Nerijus Cerniauskas: Vilniaus Universitetas

No 74, GRAPE Working Papers from GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics

Abstract: Parenthood, especially in the first years after childbirth, is unevenly split between genders and varies by country. In countries like the three Baltic states, with relatively generous parental leave benefits compared to the EU and norms encouraging mothers to care for children, females' earnings are more affected than their male counterparts. I carry out an event study to estimate the effect of having a child on the earnings of both genders and find that the earnings of females reduce by half in the first calendar year after childbirth and by 20% to 33% in the second, while male earnings do not change in either period. This results in a widening earnings gap in the Baltics, more so than in several comparison countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Norway), in the first two years after the birth of the first child.

Keywords: parenthood; earnings; Baltics; early childhood care; family benefits; child upbringing norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I24 J13 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://grape.org.pl/WP/74_Cerniauskas_website.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:fme:wpaper:74

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GRAPE Working Papers from GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jan Hagemejer ().