Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring) 1994
Klerman, Jacob Alex, and Arleen Leibowitz. 1994. "The Work-Employment Distinction Among New Mothers." Journal of Human Resources 29(2): 277-303.
CPS data for 1979 to 1988 are used to examine the determinants pf employment, actual work, and maternity leave for women in the year following childbirth. Women with better market skills (higher expected wages, older, more education) are more likely than other new mothers to have a job and to work. Among employed women, paid leave is also positively related to market skills. Work responds to childbirth more than employment does, with the greatest differences in the first three months following childbirth. Therefore, most women working when their child was one year old had returned to work within three months of childbirth.
The authors are both researchers at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California. The research reported here has been supported by the Donner Foundation and Grant No. P-50-HD-12639 from the Center for Population Research, National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Center, The RAND Corporation. The authors thank Jerene Kelly, Natasha Kostan, Donna White, Courtland Reichman, and Anita Spiess for help in preparing the manuscript. They are grateful for helpful comments on this research from Alice Nakamura, Jim Walker, an anonymous referee, and to participants at the Donner Foundation Workshop and Conference on the Economic Well-Being of Women and Children held, respectively, in February and in December 1991 at the University of Minnesota Industrial Relations Center. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in August 1994 through August 1997 from Jacob Alex Klerman, The RAND Corporation, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138.
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