Maternal Employment Trajectories and Caring for an Infant or Toddler with a Disability

Anna Zhu ()
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Anna Zhu: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, http://melbourneinstitute.com/staff/azhu/default.html

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: Mothers caring for an infant or toddler continue to face barriers in returning to work after child birth. Mothers caring for an infant or toddler with a disability, however, may face even greater barriers. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the employment costs for this group of mothers using a novel Australian administrative data set. The employment patterns of mothers with and without a disabled infant or toddler are compared both before and after child birth. The data follow 7,600 mothers on a bi-weekly basis for the entire period 12 months before and the 24 months after child birth and contain information on the disability status of the child, measures of employment and the intensity of employment. I find that mothers of disabled toddlers and infants suffer employment disadvantages relative to mothers of non-disabled children. The employment gaps grow from approximately six percentage points shortly after their children are born to 14-17 percentage points when their children are 12 to 24 months old. The employment gaps exist for full-time employment as well as for short part-time employment.

Keywords: Disability; infants or toddlers; mothers’ employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37pp
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2016n06

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