Time Use During the Parental Leave and the Return to the Employment

Olli-Pekka Ruuskanen

No 1060, Discussion Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: This study investigates whether or not time use during a parental leave has an independent explanatory power in the subsequent decision to return to employment. In studies of the exit from maternity leave it has been found that it is the mother`s education, age and type of employment contract that most strongly determines whether she returns to employment or not. However, whether the structure of time use the amount of leisure activities, the intensity of childcare or the preference for housework has an independent effect, has not been studied before. This study looks whether this is the case by using information on the work histories of those mothers that participated in the Finnish Time Use Study 1999/2000. Although based on a limited sample, only 148 mothers, our results show that the mother`s time with her children does not and the amount of active leisure and social activities, do postpone the return to employment. However, the effect was modest at the most. Instead this study confirms the results obtained from earlier studies having concentrated on the mothers socio-economic background. It seems that these factors (age, education and income level) are the driving force behind the mother`s decision to return or not to return to paid employment

Keywords: time-use; female labour supply; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C3 D1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/dp1060.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:rif:dpaper:1060

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.etla.fi/en/publications/dp1060-en/

The price is 10€.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki ().