Earnings Of Mothers Research Articles

Motherhood as a factor differentiating women’s careers

Purpose: The aim of this study is to demonstrate the differences in the professional careers of women with and without children. Design/methodology/approach: The quantitative study was conducted using the survey method (CAWI) using an online questionnaire on a sample of 517 women. The survey included single- and multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The study lasted 9 months (February- October 2022) and included professionally active women working in medium-sized or large enterprises in south-eastern Poland. Findings: The obtained results indicate emerging significant differences between the surveyed women with children and women without children, in the context of professional career, preferences and activities undertaken for professional development. Professional career covers various spheres of life, including family, which means that motherhood has a significant impact on women's professional development. The higher education and age of women with children suggest the dominance of a conventional or dual career path. The age differences between the groups coincide with the trend of younger women giving up motherhood. Childless women are more likely to work in prestigious industries, while mothers value performing a prestigious profession. The average earnings of mothers are lower than those without children, but mothers are more likely to earn top wages. Childless women value continuous learning in their careers more. Women with children show a higher level of career satisfaction, which may reflect the modern approach to combining motherhood with professional work. Research limitations/implications: The research has limitations and the results cannot be generalized to the entire population. They only focus on certain aspects related to motherhood and women's careers, which could be expanded in future research. It is also suggested to study the differences between Polish regions and a longer analysis of the development of women's careers in various phases of professional life, especially those related to motherhood. Originality/value: Due to the very diverse approach to the topic of motherhood and careers, there are few studies relating to the differences in women's careers resulting from motherhood, and even fewer studies in this area are based in selected regions of Poland. Therefore, it seems justified to take up the topic of motherhood discussed in the article as a factor differentiating women's careers. Keywords: career, women's career, maternity, motherhood, work-life balance. Category of the paper: Research paper.

Parental Leave Policy and Long-run Earnings of Mothers

Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women’s employment rates but to decrease their wages in case of extended leave duration. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers’ long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a more generous earnings-related benefit that is granted for a shorter period of time. Additionally, a ”daddy quota” of two months was introduced. To identify the causal effect of this policy mix on long-run earnings of mothers, we use a difference-in-differences approach that compares labor market outcomes of mothers who gave birth just before and right after the reform and nets out seasonal effects by including the year before. Using administrative social security data, we confirm previous findings and show that the average duration of employment interruptions increased for mothers with high pre-birth earnings. Nevertheless, we find a positive long-run effect on earnings for mothers in this group. This effect cannot be explained by changes in the selection of working mothers, working hours or changes in employer stability. Descriptive evidence suggests that the stronger involvement of fathers, incentivized by the ”daddy months”, could have facilitated mothers’ re-entry into the labor market and thereby increased earnings. For mothers with low pre-birth earnings, however, we do not find beneficial long-run effects of this parental leave reform.

Parental Leave Reform and Long-Run Earnings of Mothers

In der bisherigen Forschung konnte gezeigt werden, dass bezahlte Elternzeiten zwar die Beschaftigungsquote von Frauen erhoht, im Fall von langeren Erwerbsunterbrechungen allerdings auch zu geringeren Lohnen fuhren. Angesichts dieses Zielkonflikts diskutieren momentan viele Landern die optimale Gestaltung von Elternzeiten. In der vorliegenden Studie analysieren wir den Einfluss einer bedeutenden Elternzeitreform auf die langfristigen Lohne von Muttern. Mit dieser Reform wurde 2007 das Elterngeld eingefuhrt, wodurch das bedarfsorientierte Erziehungsgeld durch eine groszugigere einkommensabhangige Leistung ersetzt wurde, die allerdings nur fur einen kurzeren Zeitraum gewahrt wird. Zusatzlich wurden mit der Reform zwei Partnerschaftsmonate eingefuhrt. Um den kausalen Effekt dieser Reform zu identifizieren, nutzen wir einen Differenz-in-Differenz-Ansatz, in dem wir die Lohne von Muttern vergleichen, die kurz vor und unmittelbar nach der Reform ihr erstes Kind bekommen haben. Durch das zusatzliche Einbeziehen des Vorjahres konnen die saisonalen Effekte herausgerechnet werden. Anhand von administrativen Daten der Sozialversicherung konnen wir fruhere Ergebnisse bestatigen und zeigen, dass die durchschnittliche Dauer der Erwerbsunterbrechung bei Muttern mit hohem Einkommen zwar zugenommen hat, dies jedoch zu positiven langfristigen Lohneffekten fuhrt. Diese Effekte lassen sich nicht durch Veranderungen der Arbeitszeit, der beobachtbaren Charakteristika, der Arbeitgeberstabilitat oder durch unterschiedliches Fertilitatsverhalten erklaren. Deskriptive Evidenz deutet darauf hin, dass die starkere Beteiligung von Vatern, die durch die Partnerschaftsmonate gefordert wurde, den Wiedereintritt der Mutter erleichtert und dadurch ihre Tageslohne erhoht hat. Fur Mutter mit einem geringen Lohn vor der Geburt finden wir jedoch keinerlei positive Effekte durch diese Reform.

Parental Leave Reform and Long-Run Earnings of Mothers

Parental Leave Reform and Long-Run Earnings of Mothers

How Much Does Motherhood Cost Women in Social Security Benefits?

The increase in female labor force participation coupled with a higher number of women reaching retirement unmarried has increased the share of women claiming Social Security benefits earned through their own job histories. But they still bear the lion’s share of caregiving responsibilities, and the previous literature has provided clear evidence that motherhood reduces earnings during the childbearing and child-rearing years. What remains understudied is the extent to which mothers face lower lifetime earnings and, consequently, lower Social Security income. This paper uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to administrative earnings records to answer three questions. First, how much less do mothers earn over their careers compared to childless women, and how much less do they earn for each additional child? Second, how do Social Security benefits differ between mothers and non-mothers? Third, how does each of the existing elements of the Social Security system that indirectly help mothers – namely, spousal benefits and the progressivity of the benefit formula – contribute to reducing the motherhood penalty? The paper found that: -The lifetime earnings of mothers with one child are 28 percent less than the earnings of childless women, all else equal, and each additional child lowers lifetime earnings by another 3 percent. -When examining Social Security benefits, the motherhood penalty is smaller than the earnings penalty. But mothers with one child still receive 16 percent less in benefits than non-mothers, and each additional child reduces benefits by another 2 percent. -The motherhood penalty is almost negligible among women receiving spousal benefits, but mothers who receive benefits on only their own earnings histories see significantly lower Social Security income. The policy implications of the findings are: -Mothers end up less well off in economic terms when spousal benefits are not available. -With the receipt of spousal benefits likely to continue its decline, policymakers may want to consider whether to compensate women for their lost earnings due to motherhood.

Women on the Edge: Life at Street Level in the Early Republic

The port cities of the early republic were creatures of a dynamic but volatile international economy, highly susceptible to sudden shocks and the ups and downs of unpredictable business cycles. Because the urban job market depended on long-distance trade, employment and wages rose and fell with the level of commerce. City inhabitants strove to ride the crests and cushion the shocks, but how well did they do, for themselves and for each other? These are never easy questions to answer, but this is particularly the case for women and children, white and black, bound and free. Researchers interested in more comprehensive coverage of the poorer ranks of urban society have turned to the records of public and private institutions such as almshouses, workhouses, orphanages, hospitals, churches, schools, jails and penitentiaries, and courts of all kinds, including, as we shall see below, those convened by coroners. Women performed critical functions in the economies of early American cities, but female members of all classes found themselves disadvantaged by both the law and the market, where coverture, marginal jobs, and low wages forced their dependency on men. Yet, even when fully employed, men of the “working poor” did not earn enough to support their families. As a result, most poor families relied on the earnings of mothers and children to get by. Despite their near-invisibility in the records of the times, it is women’s lives at street level that the papers in this issue portray.

Motherhood and women's earnings in Anglo-American, Continental European, and Nordic Countries

The earnings of mothers make up an important, but difficult to quantify, component of parental expenditures on children. This paper compares the long-term earnings of women with children, women without children, and men. The study conducts separate analyses for less educated, moderately educated, and highly educated people in eight Anglo-American, Continental European, and Nordic countries. The study finds that, for the most part, these countries cluster into three groups, with mothers in the Continental European group experiencing the largest earnings differentials, mothers in the Nordic group experiencing the smallest, and mothers in the Anglo-American countries occupying the middle position.

Maquiladoras and market mamas: Women's work and childcare in Guatemala City and Accra

This paper analyses work, childcare, and earnings of mothers in the slums of Guatemala City and Accra. Similar factors affect decisions to work and to use formal daycare, but the importance of childcare varies with the role of the formal labour sector. In Guatemala, where formal sector work is important, higher prices for informal care increase formal daycare use. However, daycare prices and proximity to daycare centers do not significantly affect earnings in Guatemala City and Accra, respectively. Providing formal daycare may be more important to mothers' decision to work in cities where formal sector work dominates.

Gender Division of Childcare and the Sharing of Parental Leave among New Parents in Sweden

The gender division of childcare has received less research attention than the division of paid work and unpaid household work, possibly because time for childcare has been presumed to have the same determinants as time for household work and because of lack of appropriate data. Further, some of the previous studies of parents' time for childcare have been subject to limitations, such as small sample size, selective samples, and self‐reports on childcare time, and few had access to earnings data. This paper uses register data on days of parental‐leave used by mothers and fathers of Swedish children born in 1994, including information on the earnings of mothers and fathers, to analyse the determinants of fathers' participation in childcare. In 1994 parents were entitled to 15 months of parental leave of which 12 months were compensated at 90 per cent of prior earnings. Our major finding is that while both father's and mother's earnings had positive effects on father's leave use, this was smaller at higher levels of earnings, and father's earnings had a greater impact than mother's. At similar levels of earnings, the more educated fathers used more leave. Fathers also used more leave if the mother had more schooling and if they were established in the labour market, but used less leave if the mother was established in the labour market.

Welfare Background, Attitudes, and Employment among New Mothers

ARLEEN LEIBOWITZ University of California* JACOB ALEX KLERMAN RAND** This article investigates whether new mothers' chances of being employed appear to be influenced by an intergenerationally transmitted welfare culture. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are analyzed using logit and ordinary least squares regression. The findings show that, as adolescents, new mothers with welfare backgrounds were more willing than others to use welfare but were no less likely to have positive attitudes toward work. Adolescents' work attitudes influence their chances of being employed when they are new mothers, but adolescents' welfare attitudes do not. These results suggest that new mothers' chances of being employed are not influenced by an intergenerationally transmitted welfare culture. Recently, some researchers have raised concerns about whether growing up in a welfare household reduces a mother's chances of being employed (McLanahan & Garfinkel, 1989; Mead, 1989). In fact, several consequences of growing up in a welfare household may limit a mother's success in the labor market. Compared with other women, those from welfare households have higher propensities to bear children as teenagers, to have low educational attainment, to be poor, and to use welfare (Corcoran, 1995; Gottschalk, 1995; Hayes, 1987; Plotnick, 1992; Rank & Cheng, 1995). However, there appear to be no studies that specifically examine whether growing up in a welfare household affects the employment status of mothers. Nonetheless, because mothers from welfare backgrounds tend to bear children at young ages and to have low levels of education, their acquisition of work experience early in adulthood may be important to their later socioeconomic attainment. Indeed, now that families have become more dependent on the earnings of mothers (Jensen, Eggebeen, & Lichter, 1993; Wilkie, 1991) and most new mothers are in the labor force (Bachu, 1990), employment soon after childbirth appears to contribute substantially to long-term family economic stability (Wenk & Garrett, 1992; Yoon & Waite, 1994). This suggests a need to further study the mechanisms by which having a welfare background may influence new mothers' integration into the labor force, especially because changes in welfare policies may increase the pressure on low-wage employers to hire mothers who have a high likelihood of using welfare. Some researchers have speculated that socialization into a welfare culture is one mechanism by which growing up in a welfare household has detrimental effects on the early labor market experiences of young adults (Mead, 1989; Murray, 1984). This mechanism is thought to operate through the formation of enduring attitudes. Specifically, mothers from welfare households are posited to be more willing than other mothers to use welfare themselves and less confident of their abilities to overcome obstacles to working (Mead, 1989). These attitudes may reduce a mother's chances of being employed, particularly when family obligations create obstacles to employment, such as soon after childbirth. Virtually no research, however, assesses whether attitudes play a role in transmitting the effects of welfare use across generations (Bane & Ellwood, 1994; Corcoran, 1995). This article assesses three competing theoretical models of intergenerational welfare effects: a welfare culture model; an economic deprivation model; and an expectancy model. These models are applied to two research questions. First, how are women's welfare and work attitudes during adolescence influenced by growing up in a welfare household? Second, does having a welfare background affect new mothers' employment status either indirectly, through attitudes toward welfare and work that were formed during adolescence, or directly? THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL MODELS The scholarly debate over whether growing up in a welfare household impedes socioeconomic attainment has typically focused on the relative influence of cultural and structural mechanisms of intergenerational transmission. …

Mothers' Human Capital and Childcare in Britain

Childcare may affect the earnings of mothers, not just by enabling them to take employment while using it, but also by conserving human capital and increasing earnings at later stages of the mother's life. This paper simulates the lifetime earnings of a 'typical' British mother under a variety of childcare regimes. Childcare which continues into the years of schooling is particularly valuable. For a woman who changes her labour force participation behaviour as a result of the availability of childcare, the resources generated are shown to exceed the resource costs of the childcare, and the revenue gain to the exchequer may exceed the costs of 100 per cent subsidy.

The potential of child care tax credits to reduce poverty and welfare recipiency

As more and more mothers of young children enter the work force, interest in govern- ment financing of child care grows. The chief government subsidy for child care is the child care credit in the federal Internal Revenue Code. This is a nonrefundable credit and therefore provides benefits only to those with incomes high enough to require them to pay income tax. Yet of the $5.5 billion spent by the federal government on child care in 1986, this program accounted for $3.5 billion. This paper simulates the effects of expanding the child care tax credit by (1) doubling the reimbursement rates of the current credit; (2) making the credit refundable; and (3) both making the credit refundable and increasing its value for all families with income below $ 32,000. Results suggest that these changes will have modest effects on the income and earnings of mothers, and on the poverty gap and welfare recipiency. Costs, however, differ substantially. Doubling the value of the credit is far more expensive than either making the credit refundable or making it both refundable and more generous at the bottom of the income distribution. Making the credit refundable may cost taxpayers very little by leading to increases in hours worked and concomitant reductions in welfare payments.