Navigating Motherhood: Endogenous Penalties and Career Choice

Sena Coskun, Husnu Dalgic () and Yasemin Ozdemir ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: Women strategically sort into "family-friendly" sectors characterized by lower returns to experience but also lower per-child penalties, before the birth of their first child. This pre-birth sorting represents an ex-ante career cost, a "sorting penalty" not captured by conventional measures. We build a heterogeneous agent model of career choice and fertility, incorporating both quality-quantity (Q-Q) and time-expenditure (T-E) trade-offs, to quantify this cost. Our central finding is that despite this sorting penalty being surprisingly small, it reveals an important mechanism: Women at the productivity margin are the switchers and use the Q-Q and T-E trade-offs as their primary, more powerful tools to navigate motherhood and career. Our findings highlight that frameworks excluding these trade-offs will overestimate the fertility responses and career costs associated with policies.

Keywords: child penalty; fertility; sectoral gender segregation; job switch; quality-quantity trade-off (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J13 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53
Date: 2025-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gen and nep-lab
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Working Paper: Navigating Motherhood: Endogenous Penalties and Career Choice (2026)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_722

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