Heterogeneous Effects of Childbirth on the Couple’s Division of Paid Workhours: The Role of Pre-Birth Breadwinner Status, Family Policies and Gender Culture

Fei Bian , University of Lausanne
Luana Marx, University of Lausanne
Leen Vandecasteele, u'n

Previous research has shown that the birth of a child decreases women’s paid working time, but has almost no influence on men’s worktime allocation. While most studies to date have focused on individual outcomes, this paper investigates couple-level responses to childbirth. We use a difference-in-difference approach to analyse changes in couple’s division of paid workhours prior to and in the years after birth for two different pre-birth couple types: male main earner and equal earners. Additionally, using multilevel random slopes modeling, we examine how family policies and a country’s gender culture moderate the childbirth’s influence on women’s relative working time. Our analysis is based on micro-level data from EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) covering 31 countries and macro-level data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). We find heterogenous effects of childbirth on the couple’s division of paid workhours, as the decline in women’s relative working time is stronger in couples with a male breadwinner than in those with two equal earners before the birth of a first child. Moreover, our results show that longer maternity leave strengthens and childcare provision weakens the negative effect of childbirth on female share of couple’s working hours, and these policies have a stronger effect for pre-birth male main earner couples. The findings also suggest that living in a country with a progressive gender culture weakens the negative childbirth effect on women’s relative working time regardless of couple type.

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 Presented in Session 16. Labour Market and Parenthood