Abstract

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Using the 1983-to-2004 Longitudinal Worker File, this study examines the post-childbirth employment, job mobility and earnings trajectories of Canadian mothers. We found that both the long- and the short-term post-childbirth employment rates of early 2000s cohorts of Canadian mothers were higher than their mid-1980s counterparts, and, relative to childless women, Canadian mothers became less likely to quit over time.

Our data also allow us to examine the earnings impact of childbirth for a group of Canadian mothers who had strong labour market attachment. For them, earnings dropped by 40% and 30% in the year of childbirth and the year after, respectively. Under both the fixed-effects and the fixed-trend models, the earnings impact of childbirth declined over the other post-childbirth years. Results from the fixed-trend model further suggest that, from the second to the seventh post-childbirth years, the negative effects varied between 8% and 3% and became negligible thereafter.

Keywords: maternity leave, post-childbirth employment, family gap