JESS Seminar: The Effect of Child Health on Maternal Labor Market Outcomes

We investigate the impact of poor child’s health on maternal long-run labor market outcomes. Our empirical approach accounts for both endogenous sample selection and the possible non-randomness assignment of the child’s health status. We find that the presence of a health impaired child decreases initially wages and employment, but we estimate a long-term significant and positive impact on both outcomes. We show that long-run effects are mainly driven by mothers on a lower career trajectory. Investigating possible channels, we find that that these mothers delay future fertility as a result of a health impaired first child to ease the strain on their labor market outcomes.