Mothers' Job Search After Childbirth

Lukas Laffers and Bernhard Schmidpeter ()
Additional contact information
Bernhard Schmidpeter: Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz

No 2021-13, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: We explore the impact of successful job search after childbirth on mothers' labor market careers. Using a bounding approach and administrative data, we find strong heterogeneity in the returns to leaving the pre-birth employer. Moving to a new employer after childbirth leads to an increase in re-employment earnings only for mothers at the upper part of the earnings distribution. For these mothers, initial job search also increases long-term earnings. We provide evidence that earnings gains are the result of higher geographical mobility and longer commutes to work. Successful mothers are also more likely to move to faster growing firms and firms offering better opportunities to women. Our results do not suggest that husbands play an important role in supporting successful job search of mothers.

Keywords: parental leave; return-to-work; job search; earnings; earnings gaps (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J13 J31 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lab
Note: English
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2021/wp2113.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Mothers' Job Search after Childbirth (2021)
Working Paper: Mothers' job search after childbirth (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:jku:econwp:2021-13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().