Economics Seminar - Motherhood Timing and the Child Penalty: Bounding the Returns to Delay

Event Date: 15 November 2023

Speaker: Steven Dieterle, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the School of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.

Time: 4-5:15pm

Location: Please contact Rachel Hill (r.hill@strath.ac.uk) for Zoom details

Abstract: "Age at first birth has increased over time with many benefits likely to come in the labor market. We use data from Austria to bound these returns — estimating moderate effects of delaying motherhood on earnings, employment, firm quality, and attachment to pre-birth firms in the medium run. We estimate returns on career earnings of between 1.0-2.2% per year of delay — implying meaningful reductions in gender inequality. However, the bounds suggest only small differences in earnings trajectories post-birth. Therefore, much of the lifetime return comes from delaying the child penalty rather than changing how careers respond to children."

Published: 8 November 2023