Motherhood and market work decisions in institutional context: A European perspective

Daniela Del Boca, Silvia Pasqua and Chiara Pronzato

No 11, Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi

Abstract: In this paper, we explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on womens decisions regarding work and childbearing, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We estimate the two decisions jointly and, in addition to personal characteristics, we include variables related to the childcare system, parental leave arrangements, family allowances, and part time opportunities. Our empirical results indicate that a non-negligible portion of the differences in labour market participation decisions of women from different European countries can be attributed to characteristics of their social policies, while the impact of environmental variables on fertility decisions is only marginally significant. Environmental effects vary by educational level in a significant way. Part-time opportunities (when well-paid and protected), childcare, optional parental leave, and child allowances have more of an impact on the participation decisions of women at lower educational levels.

Keywords: employment; fertility; childcare; parental leave (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2008-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it/WorkingPapers/Dondena_WP011.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Failed to connect to FTP server ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it: No such host is known.

Related works:
Journal Article: Motherhood and market work decisions in institutional context: a European perspective (2009)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:don:donwpa:011

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.dondena.unibocconi.it/wp/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi via Rontgen, 1 - 20136 Milano.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Johnson ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).