The Family Peer Effect on Mothers' Labour Supply

Cheti Nicoletti, Kjell G Salvanes and Emma Tominey ()

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: The well documented rise in female labour force participation in the last century has flattened in recent decades, but the proportion of mothers working full-time has been steadily increasing. In this paper we provide the first empirical evidence that the increase in mothers' working hours can be amplified through the effect on her labour decisions from the decisions of her family peers. Using Norwegian administrative data covering the full population on women, we study a long-run influence of the family network on mothers' labour decisions up to seven years post birth by regressing the mothers' working hours on the average working hours across her sister and female cousins. To identify the casual peer effect, we exploit the partially overlapping peer group approach by considering for each mother both her family and her neighbourhood networks, therefore assuming that the mother interacts with her neighbours and family but she does not interact meaningfully with her family's neighbours. Moreover, we provide some empirical evidence on the potential mechanisms such as the importance of information transmission versus imitation in explaining the peer effect.

Keywords: Peer effects; Family network; Sibling spillover effects; Cousins spillover effects; Instrumental variable estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C26 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Family Peer Effect on Mothers' Labor Supply (2018)
Working Paper: The Family Peer Effect on Mothers´ Labour Supply (2016)
Working Paper: The Family Peer Effect on Mothers' Labour Supply (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:yorken:16/04

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