Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect

Recent work has quantified the large negative effects of motherhood on female labor market outcomes in Europe and the US. But these results may not apply to developing countries, where labor markets work differently and informality is widespread. In less developed countries, informal jobs, which typ...

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Autores principales: Berniell, Inés, Berniell, María Lucila, Mata, Dolores de la, Edo, María, Marchionni, Mariana
Formato: Articulo Documento de trabajo
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/77486
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/doc_cedlas247.pdf
Aporte de:
id I19-R120-10915-77486
record_format dspace
institution Universidad Nacional de La Plata
institution_str I-19
repository_str R-120
collection SEDICI (UNLP)
language Inglés
topic Ciencias Económicas
gender pay gap
child penalty
developing countries
labor informality
Chile
spellingShingle Ciencias Económicas
gender pay gap
child penalty
developing countries
labor informality
Chile
Berniell, Inés
Berniell, María Lucila
Mata, Dolores de la
Edo, María
Marchionni, Mariana
Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
topic_facet Ciencias Económicas
gender pay gap
child penalty
developing countries
labor informality
Chile
description Recent work has quantified the large negative effects of motherhood on female labor market outcomes in Europe and the US. But these results may not apply to developing countries, where labor markets work differently and informality is widespread. In less developed countries, informal jobs, which typically include microenterprises and self-employment, offer more time flexibility but poorer social protection and lower labor earnings. These characteristics affect the availability of key inputs in the technology to raise children, and therefore may affect the interplay between parenthood and labor market outcomes. Through an event-study approach we estimate short and long-run labor market impacts of children in Chile, an OECD developing country with a relatively large informal sector. We find that the birth of the first child has strong and long lasting effects on labor market outcomes of Chilean mothers, while fathers remain unaffected. Becoming a mother implies a sharp decline in mothers' labor supply, both in the extensive and intensive margins, and in hourly wages. We also show that motherhood affects the occupational structure of employed mothers, as the share of jobs in the informal sector increases remarkably. In order to quantify what the motherhood effect would have been in the absence of an informal labor market, we build a quantitative model economy, that includes an informal sector which offers more flexible working hours at the expense of lower wages and weaker social protection, and a technology to produce child quality that combines time, material resources and the quality of social protection services. We perform a counterfactual experiment that indicates that the existence of the informal sector in Chile helps to reduce the drop in LFP after motherhood in about 35%. We conclude that mothers find in the informal sector the flexibility to cope with both family and labor responsibilities, although at the cost of resigning contributory social protection and reducing their labor market prospects.
format Articulo
Documento de trabajo
author Berniell, Inés
Berniell, María Lucila
Mata, Dolores de la
Edo, María
Marchionni, Mariana
author_facet Berniell, Inés
Berniell, María Lucila
Mata, Dolores de la
Edo, María
Marchionni, Mariana
author_sort Berniell, Inés
title Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
title_short Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
title_full Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
title_fullStr Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
title_full_unstemmed Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
title_sort gender gaps in labor informality: the motherhood effect
publishDate 2019
url http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/77486
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/doc_cedlas247.pdf
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