Summarise the Journal “Employment after Motherhood: a European Comparison”, setting it in its theoretical context, comparing it with other studies and discuss any policy implications. Illustrate your essay with specific examples.

The focus of this study by Gutiérrez-Domènech is on the relationship between family circumstances and female labour market participation. The aim is to investigate how different policies across countries, affect the employment of women after childbirth. This allows recommendations to be made about which policies should be used. Traditional economic theory on female participation in the labour force suggests that women are likely to weigh up the marginal costs and benefits of returning to employment after the birth of their child. The factors they are likely to take into account are the wage they would receive in employment against any unearned income. Both income and substitution effects will be present.
It is an extension of earlier studies on the likelihood of employment after first birth. There has been a large amount of research done in this area however; very few studies have included cross-country and cross-time comparisons. Most of the previous studies have focused on a single country. For example Gutiérrez-Domènech (2002) looks at the penalties women face by taking time out of employment to have children in Spain. She states that this paper is an attempt to harmonise all these earlier findings.
It is structured as follows: it identifies those factors which could affect women’s decisions, followed by an explanation of the data source. The observed differences between important factors in the different countries are then described, followed by an examination of the observed patterns of employment around childbirth and then around marriage. After this a model is built up to assess the significance of factors. It uses cross-country and cross-time comparisons to make a policy evaluation, before some concluding comments.
Factors which could be significant in determining the allocation of time between employment and childcare are divided under various headings. These are preferences and cultural aspects, the price and substitutes of childcare and policies of family-labour taxation, all factors which have been identified in earlier studies. The literature review, which she has included, serves to establish the most important issues to come out of these studies and look at what gaps still need filling, in terms of research, as well as trying to improve on these previous studies.
The countries that Gutiérrez-Domènech has chosen for her study are Belgium, West-Germany, Spain, Italy and Sweden. The main reasons for this choice are that the same data source was available in all the countries and also, labour and family policies in these countries are different, so they provide a good comparison. The data is obtained from the Family and Fertility Survey (FFS). This involved asking individuals to respond to a survey at a particular time, and also to answer questions about their past, including family and work history. Their responses are used to estimate the probability of returning to employment after the birth of their first child. Problems with the data meant she had to restrict the regression to those variables which exist in all five countries.
The study uses a model which obtains estimates of the probability of being in work; the Latent Variable Model for Binary Variables. Using a regression model gives results for the significance of each of the variables tested. A regression of dummy coefficients for each year on estimates of policies, labour market, country dummies and linear trend is also carried out. The results of the model are described using various tables and graphs.
The study also considers that the withdrawal from work could be caused by marriage. The reason is that the patterns show women leaving employment in Spain and Italy a significant period before the birth. To test this hypothesis they used the responses from women without children and observed employment around their marriage date. She finds that part of the fall in employment can be explained by marriage, although mainly in the more traditional Mediterranean countries. However, these results are not conclusive, so the significance of marriage should not be overestimated.
The main findings of the paper are that the probability of being in employment after the first-birth differs across countries and across time. In some countries the probability of post-birth employment has increased, whilst in others it has fallen. Spain and West-Germany show the biggest fall in employment rates after childbirth. The main explanations they find for this are differences in female educational levels, the taxation system and the availability of part time opportunities. In terms of cross-country comparisons, it finds that some factors are more significant in some countries than others.
An earlier paper was carried out by Gutiérrez-Domèneche in 2002 titled, “Employment Penalty after Motherhood in Spain”, where she looked at the penalties faced by women who take time out from employment to start a family. There are similarities between the data she has used in both studies. This study fits in nicely with her later study because it examines two of the possibilities which occur in terms of women’s employment after their child’s birth. The two penalties are career break job-penalty or downward occupation mobility job-penalty. In terms of data, it is more extensive in this study because it comes from 3 sources, FFS, EPA and ECHP. This makes up for their individual deficiencies. The same model is used in both studies but with different data sources. The results of this model agree with the later study, although the results are slightly more extensive like the Dex, Joshi and Macran Paper below.
Another interesting study has come from Dex, Joshi and Macran, “Women’s Employment: Transitions around Childbearing” (1998), a paper that only focuses on the UK. In common with the study by Gutiérrez-Domèneche it studies the behaviour of mothers in the labour market. One difference, however, is that it looks at wage and unearned income as the most important economic influences on women’s labour supply. This seems more compatible with traditional economic theory. Although a similar method is used to collect data as that of Gutiérrez-Domèneche, through the use of a survey, this study does not seem as reliable. As already stated the two most important explanatory models used in this study are wage and unearned income, two variables which she did not consider. This also includes a wider range of factors such as the age of the youngest child and the type of family unit. They find results which are in-line with expectations. Both studies recognise that over time mother’s behaviour in the labour market has changed significantly.
Taking the results of this study allows us to make some policy recommendations. The fact that education seems to be such an important factor, suggests that policies are needed to improve education for women, particularly policies which encourage them to stay on in education. Clearly for those countries such as West-Germany, who still have a system based on joint taxation; it would be beneficial to move to one based on separate taxation. Another set of policies which would help would be policies to make labour markets more flexible. This study also plays down the importance of childcare policies because this is not a significant factor in the model.