Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers’ labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel dataset that follows mother-child pairs through time. We find that sleeping one hour less per night on average significantly decreases maternal labour force participation, the number of hours worked and household income. We identify one mechanism driving the effects, namely the influence of maternal sleep on selection into full-time versus part-time work. Increased schedule flexibility for mothers with sufficient tenure mitigates the negative effects of sleep deprivation.

Keywords: child sleep; sleep; maternal employment; working hours; workplace flexibility; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J13 J22 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-01-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published in Journal of Health Economics, 1, January, 2020, 69. ISSN: 0167-6296

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102543/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes (2020)
Working Paper: Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:102543

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