Maternal employment trajectories and caring for an infant or toddler with a disability

ABSTRACT

Mothers caring for an infant or toddler continue to face barriers in returning to work after child birth. Mothers caring for an infant or toddler with a disability, however, may face even greater barriers. This article contributes to the literature by exploring the employment costs for this group of mothers using a novel Australian administrative data set. The employment patterns of mothers with and without a disabled infant or toddler are compared both before and after child birth. The data follow 7600 mothers on a bi-weekly basis for the entire period 12 months before and the 24 months after child birth and contain information on the disability status of the child, measures of employment and the intensity of employment. I find that mothers of disabled toddlers and infants suffer employment disadvantages relative to mothers of non-disabled children. The employment gaps grow from approximately 6 percentage points shortly after their children are born to 14–17 percentage points when their children are 12–24 months old. The employment gaps exist for full-time employment as well as for short part-time employment.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• infants or toddlers
• mothers’ employment

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I12
• J13
• J22

Acknowledgements

I thank David Ribar, Tim Robinson and Agne Suziedelyte for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. The views expressed herein are solely my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Extending short periods of leave, however, can have positive effects on future employment and earnings (Rossin-Slater, Ruhm, and Waldfogel 2013).

² CA medical reviews are conducted within 2 months of developmental milestones such as at 3 years and 4 months (if CA was granted before the child was 2 years old).

³ Additional physical and developmental disabilities and medical conditions were added to the LORD in 2005.

⁴ Between 2001 and 2004, the CA amount given to parents was between 80 and 90 Australian dollars per fortnight.

⁵ Mothers who start to receive income support payments after withdrawing from the labour market are now excluded, which can lead me to underestimate the employment penalties. It does, however, avoid mis-classifying a mother who churns onto the income support system (for example, she begins to receive a DSP payment) once she withdraws from the labour market as being ‘employed’ when in fact she only has a non-zero income because of DSP receipt.

⁶ The family payment receipt status is also adjusted accordingly.

⁷ Neighbourhood status based on a Socio Economic Index for Areas (SEIFA) score of disadvantage, mother’s age, partner’s age, family size, age of the youngest child, marital or de facto status of relationship, indigenous status, Australian born status, mother’s disability status, and the presence of an older child with disability in the household.

⁸ Historical time as a fifth-order polynomial of days after 15 June 2001, seasonal dummies for every month of the year, an indicator to capture changes to Carer’s Allowance eligibility rules (equals to 1 for all time periods after year 2005; 0 otherwise), and maternal health shocks in the form of any changes to the mother’s Disability Support Pensions (DSP) receipt.

⁹ As the types of disabilities that are diagnosed before age four and in the List of Recognised Disabilities are those that are less susceptible to external factors, I assume that reverse causation is not a problem.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (project number CE140100027). The Centre is administered by the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland, with nodes at The University of Western Australia, The University of Melbourne and The University of Sydney.