Is There an Advantage to Working? The Relationship between Maternal Employment and Intergenerational Mobility☆

Martha H. Stinson and Peter Gottschalk

A chapter in Inequality: Causes and Consequences, 2016, vol. 43, pp 355-405 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: We investigate the question of whether investing in a child’s development by having a parent stay at home when the child is young is correlated with the child’s adult outcomes. Specifically, do children with stay-at-home mothers have higher adult earnings than children raised in households with a working mother? The major contribution of our study is that, unlike previous studies, we have access to rich longitudinal data that allows us to measure both the parental earnings when the child is very young and the adult earnings of the child. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that show insignificant differences between children raised by stay-at-home mothers during their early years and children with mothers working in the market. We find no impact of maternal employment during the first five years of a child’s life on earnings, employment, or mobility measures of either sons or daughters. We do find, however, that maternal employment during children’s high school years is correlated with a higher probability of employment as adults for daughters and a higher correlation between parent and daughter earnings ranks.

Keywords: Human capital; child development; female labor supply; J13; J22; J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rleczz:s0147-912120160000043018

DOI: 10.1108/S0147-912120160000043018

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