The Labour Supply of Mothers

Hélène Turon

No 15312, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This chapter surveys recent literature on the drivers of mothers’ labour supply in OECD countries. We present a number of facts on the variations across time and across countries of family composition and mothers’ employment. We aim to answer key questions on their decision to return to work after childbirth: How is the decision taken within the household? What are the contemporaneous and longer term determinants of this decision? What other lifecycle choices are interrelated with the labour supply choice? How do social norms and policy influence this decision? What role is there for policy to play in households’ decision regarding mothers’ participation in the labour force? We aim to summarise the main results from recent research on these questions. We will see that there are large variations in the policy choices made in different countries, which may reflect both the difficulty of designing an optimal mix of policies and the diversity of societies’ perceptions of women combining motherhood and career.

Keywords: wages; childcare; labour force participation; hours of work; children; collective model; social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J22 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lma and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, Springer, 2023

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Working Paper: The Labour Supply of Mothers (2022)
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