Child Penalties and Marriage Dissolution

Sara Ayllón (), Linda Kirkpatrick () and Alexander T. Plum ()
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Sara Ayllón: Universitat de Girona
Linda Kirkpatrick: Auckland University of Technology
Alexander T. Plum: Auckland University of Technology

No 17658, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates how a change in marital status can influence labour market-related child penalties, by comparing married couples and those whose marriage is dissolved after the birth of their first child. We take advantage of the rich administrative data from New Zealand and show that child penalties vary greatly by civil status: whereas the employment penalty for married mothers is 32%, for mothers who get divorced within seven years of giving birth, it is about 5% and indistinguishable from that facing fathers. The same is true of earnings, indicating that divorced mothers have a much stronger attachment to the labour market than do married mothers. Our section on mechanisms points to differences in economic need as the driver behind the discrepancy in child penalties by marital status.

Keywords: child penalty; labour market; marital dissolution; event-study estimates; New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
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