The Battle of the Siblings: The Effect of Birth Order on the Probability of Working in Managerial/Professional Occupations
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Using material from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience of Young Women this study analyzes 8 years of panel data from 895 white married women with husband present who had a 1st birth prior to the 1978 interview. This research investigates social-psychological factors that may affect exit from the labor force prior to the birth event and reentry following the birth event. Just 10 years ago only about 1 in 3 mothers with preschoolers was in the labor force; by 1984 over 1/2 were either employed or seeking work. A linear model utilizing 8 independent variables as well as 3 interaction terms was used to predict whether or not a particular woman was in the labor force at the time of the interview. Covariance analyses suggest 1) that there is a large and statistically significant effect of attitude toward married women in the work force on labor-force participation throughout the perinatal period and 2) that the effect of attitude towards married women in the work force on perinatal labor-force participation is stronger than that of proximity to the birth event age age at 1st marriage husbands income or education. The strength of the effect of a social-psychological variable suggests that further research in this area should examine the role of other social and psychological factors. Particular attention needs to be paid to how married couples perceive the costs and rewards associated with the wifes labor-force participation with the understanding that any given cost or reward will not necessarily have the same subjective meaning to different couples.
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Maternal employment decisions following the birth of a first child were examined. Occupational status, family income, role commitment, the division of labor, and job stress distinguished mothers who returned to fullor part-time employment and those who stayed home throughout the first year. Financial need was the most important reason given for returning to work within 3 months after the infant's birth, but career development and personal enjoyment also contributed to women's employment decisions.
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Occupational prestige
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Does childhood health capital affect long-run labor market success? We address this question using inpatient hospital admission records linked to population census records. Sibling fixed effects estimates indicate that in comparison to their brothers, boys with health deficiencies were more likely to experience downward occupational mobility relative to their father's occupational rank. This decline in occupational success across generations can be decomposed into a lower likelihood of attaining white collar status and a higher likelihood of working in unskilled jobs, which translated into lower occupational wages on average. Evidence indicates that a lower school attendance rate and higher rates of disability in both childhood and adulthood are plausible mechanisms for our findings.
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This study examined the association between womens wages and childbearing with a primary focus on birth timing. Three relevant issues were established to support the context of this research: 1) the association between motherhood and pay; 2) the direct wage penalty; and 3) the timing implications of career interruptions for womens wages. Using the Ordinary Least Square Model and fixed-effects models analysis identified a significant child wage penalty and showed that it varies by birth timing being concentrated among women who gave birth at an early life stage between age 20 and 27. Consistent with life course theory the timing of childbirth shapes womens life chances in a significant way. This study also showed that those who first gave birth as teens were not as vulnerable as other early childbearers to the adverse impact of children on wages. Education too reduces the magnitude of the penalty. However the difference between the two groups was no longer significant after unobserved heterogeneity was taken into account. The association between children and womens wages is likely to be mediated by factors such as the availability of maternity benefits and child care arrangements.
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We explore whether and how educational performance varies with birth order. Starting from the simple associations between birth order and educational performance we show that these differences persist when one controls for family size and other demographic characteristics and that the birth order differences persist over time. We then argue that birth order matters for other important decisions parents make that are important inputs into the educational production process. In particular we argue that birth order affects a mothers decision to participate in the labor force the decision about whether to enroll her child in pre-kindergarten and the decision about the age she decides to enter her child in formal schooling. To account for the role these decisions play on how birth order affects ultimate educational performance we use cross-state and temporal variation in compulsory schooling laws and state labor market conditions. Because our data the Children of the NLSY79 cover a long time period (1986 through 2002) we observe a large number of children within families who were allowed to enter school at different ages. These differences in the age of first permitted entry mean that parents face greater incentives to enter a youngest child into school at an earlier age than they did an older sibling. We estimate a model of six simultaneous equations to account for the way in which birth order affects each. The results suggest that even controlling for the association between birth order and other behaviors that influence educational attainment birth order effects persist in statistically and economically meaningful ways. Children of higher order birth do less well in on achievement tests. We also estimate value-added models of gains in achievement. We find that birth order penalties disappear in mathematics but persist in tests of reading and picture-vocabulary association. The results suggest what commonsense tells us - that actors in the educational production process likely reallocate resources in favor of children who are underperforming in school. (authors)
Educational Attainment
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Educational Attainment
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The influence of women's birth parity and accumulated market skills on their current labor force participation and birth expectations is examined within a sequential choice framework. Analysis of household data from the 1973 Philippines National Demographic Survey suggests these patterns: (a) women who have accumulated larger families work less in the current period and anticipate fewer additional births; (b) women with more past work experience tend to work more hours in the current period; and (c) work experience appears to have only a weak negative effect on birth expectations among older women.
Women's work
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European maternity legislation is more generous than that afforded pregnant workers in the United States and may, in part, may explain the higher US infant mortality rate. This coupled with older women and more non-married women having children has increased interest in the health effects of job stress on pregnancy outcomes in the United States. The few studies available have, for the most part, used self-reported data to assess the association between job stress and instantaneous abortion and findings have been mixed. This work, along with the anecdotal evidence from Europe, suggests that reducing job stress may benefit infant health. However, the first step is to provide more empirical evidence on the exact relationship between employment, job stress, and birth outcomes, which is the aim of this study. The analysis utilizes data from the Vital Statistics birth records from the State of Georgia for the period 1994 to 2002 linked with two sets of state administrative records compiled by the Georgia Department of Labor for the purposes of administering the state's Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, and Welfare Recipient Data from the Georgia Department of Human Resources. These data provide a census of working mothers in the state and contain detailed information on individual human capital, health (pregnancy outcomes), welfare, and labor market characteristics as well as information on the human capital characteristics of the father. After deleting observations with missing data, the sample includes information on 591,105 births to working mothers in this time period. In the analysis adverse birth outcomes are measured by complications of labor and delivery, congenial defects, premature birth, and low-birth weight. Job stress was characterized as holding multiple jobs, a high employer turnover rate, and firm tenure. Preliminary findings reveal positive and statistically significant associations between birth outcomes and job stress. Thus these results suggest that work related stress is detrimental to birth outcomes. To the extent that more generous prenatal benefits including extended maternity leave and job protection reduce stress, one would expect birth outcomes to improve. This is a direction for future work.
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The occupational trajectories of mothers remain far more discontinuous than those of fathers. In France, the workforce participation of mothers, including mothers of young children, is high and continuously rising. However, that rise needs to be put into perspective. It mainly represents an increase in part-time work in the 1990s. Moreover, the extension of the allocation parentale d’education (a monthly benefit for parents who stop working to take care of young children) to mothers of two children in 1994 caused a decline in female workforce participation, highlighting difficulties balancing work and family. This article looks at the birth of children as the trigger for occupational transitions, and describes the trend and conditions of women’s return to work after the birth of a child. Using data from the Families and Employers survey (INED 2004-2005) and the model’s estimate of the impact of length of career break on propensity to return to work by number of children, it shows that career breaks to take care of children become more frequent and longer after the birth of each sub-sequent child, depending on a woman’s attachment to work and employability. A woman’s educational level and occupational status before the birth are determinant factors in the length of the career break and their role increases with birth order. The farther a woman is from the norm of a standard full-time job before the birth, the more likely she is to experience a long period of economic inactivity, followed by a precarious or choppy occupational trajectory after the birth. A woman’s occupational trajectory after the birth of a first child is mainly conditioned by her cultural and social background. Returning to employment on a part-time basis increases substantially with the number of children and depends strongly on the conditions of the last-held job. Part-time employment is more frequent among public-sector employees. This article shows that women’s occupational pathways depend more on achieving a work/family balance than on the opportunity cost of career breaks. That finding argues for public policies to facilitate the work/life balance rather than for measures that exclude women from the workforce, especially as career breaks ultimately have a negative impact on women’s pensions.
Employability
Parental Leave
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