Child Sleep and Maternal Labour Market Outcomes

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche

No 11755, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers' labour market performance. To isolate exogenous 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: working hours; maternal employment; sleep; child sleep; workplace flexibility; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J13 J22 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lma
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Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics , 2020, 69, 1022589

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Working Paper: Child Sleep and Maternal Labour Market Outcomes (2018)
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