Navigating Motherhood: Endogenous Penalties and Career Choice

Sen 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 and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_722

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