Trapped in the care burden: occupational downward mobility of Italian couples after childbirth

Teresa Barbieri, Michele Bavaro and Valeria Cirillo

No 1475, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: How does childbirth impact the career paths of men and women within the same household? To what extent does the unpaid care work related to this event contribute to the downward mobility experienced by women in a highly flexible labour market like Italy? Drawing on feminist and labour market studies, this article examines how caregiving responsibilities, particularly childcare, influence downward employment transitions for men and women in couples, specifically from full-time to part-time, from higher-paid to lower-paid jobs, and from employment to unemployment. The study also employs latent class analysis to map out variations in within-household inequality experienced after childbirth among couples. To achieve this, we utilize a unique survey-administrative linked dataset. The findings highlight significant penalties faced by women, not only immediately after childbirth but persisting for up to three years afterwards. Moreover, the latent class analysis reveals a small proportion of pro-female households compared to egalitarian and pro-male classes.

Keywords: Gender pay gaps; occupational downward mobility; gender inequalities; motherhood penalty; micro-econometric analyses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hme and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/300892/1/GLO-DP-1475.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:zbw:glodps:1475

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().