Fertility as a Driver of Maternal Employment

Julia Schmieder

No 13496, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Based on findings from high-income countries, typically economists hypothesize that having more children unambiguously decreases the time mothers spend in the labor market. Few studies on lower-income countries, in which low household wealth, informal child care, and informal employment opportunities prevail, find mixed results. Using Mexican census data, I find a positive effect of an instrument-induced increase in fertility on maternal employment driven by an increase in informal work. The presence of grandparents and low wealth appear to be important. Econometric approaches that allow extrapolating from this complier-specific effect indicate that the response in informal employment is non-negative for the entire sample.

Keywords: middle-income countries; female labor supply; fertility; informality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 J22 J46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue and nep-lab
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Published - revised version published in: Labour Economics, 2021, 72,102048

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Related works:
Journal Article: Fertility as a driver of maternal employment (2021)
Working Paper: Fertility as a Driver of Maternal Employment (2020)
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