Child penalties across industries: why job characteristics matter

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the impact of parenthood on women’s labour market outcomes in Belgium. Using administrative data and an event study design, we show that mothers lose 32% of their labour earnings relative to fathers, up to eight years after the birth of their first child. Furthermore, we find a strong positive correlation between the size of the child penalty for a given sector and the share of its workers who report working atypical work schedules or irregular hours, suggesting that job characteristics matter in determining the size of the child penalty.

KEYWORDS:

• Motherhood
• child penalty
• labour earnings
• industries
• working conditions

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J13
• J16
• J22

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Since we follow parents over the period 2002–2016, our panel is unbalanced.

² The loss in labour income is partially compensated by maternity leave benefits – 82% of pre-leave income – as shown on Figure A1 in the Appendix.

³ The new sample is conditional on being salaried employee in a given sector at t = −4. It comprises 202,195 first-time mothers and 201,496 first-time fathers.