From Giving Birth to Paid Labor: The Effects of Adult Education for Prime-Aged Mothers

Annette Bergemann and Gerard J. van den Berg

No 3600, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Women without work after childbirth are at risk of losing their connection to the labor market. However, they may participate in adult education programs. We analyze the effect of this on the duration to work and on the wage rate, by applying conditional difference-in-differences approaches. We use Swedish matched longitudinal register data sets covering the full population. The Swedish adult education program is unprecedented in its size, and enrollment is universally available at virtually no cost. We focus on low-skilled women who have recently given birth. We take account of program accessibility, selection issues, course heterogeneity, the income received during adult education, parental leave, and child care fees. To understand the enrollment decision from the mothers' point of view, we use the estimates to calibrate a job search model.

Keywords: evaluation of adult education; job search model; female labor supply; wages; participation; unemployment; schooling; conditional difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H43 J68 J64 J24 C14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ifn and nep-lab
Date: 2008-07
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3600.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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3600

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().