Maternal Employment and Child Outcomes: Evidence from the Irish Marriage Bar

48 Pages Posted: 23 Oct 2017

See all articles by Irene Mosca

Irene Mosca

National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth)

Vincent O'Sullivan

University College London

Robert Wright

University of Strathclyde in Glasgow; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between maternal employment and child outcomes using micro-data collected in the third wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. A novel source of exogenous variation in the employment decisions of women is used to investigate this relationship. Between the 1920s and the 1970s in Ireland, women working in certain sectors and jobs were required to leave their jobs once they married. The majority of women affected by this "Marriage Bar" then became mothers and never returned to work, or returned only after several years. Regression analysis is used to compare the educational attainment of the children of mothers who were required to leave employment on marriage because of the Marriage Bar to the educational attainment of the children of mothers who were not required to do so.It is found that the children of mothers affected by the Marriage Bar were about seven percentage points more likely to complete university education than the children of mothers who were not. This is a sizeable effect when compared to the observation that about 40% of the children in the sample completed university education. This effect is found to be robust to alternative specifications that include variables aimed at controlling for differences in maternal occupation, personality traits, and differences in paternal education.

Keywords: marriage, mother, employment, child, university education

JEL Classification: J12, J16, J20

Suggested Citation

Mosca, Irene and O'Sullivan, Vincent and Wright, Robert, Maternal Employment and Child Outcomes: Evidence from the Irish Marriage Bar. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11085, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3056623 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3056623

Irene Mosca (Contact Author)

National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) ( email )

Maynooth, County Kildare W23 F2H6
Ireland

Vincent O'Sullivan

University College London

Gower Street
London
United Kingdom

Robert Wright

University of Strathclyde in Glasgow ( email )

16 Richmond Street
Glasgow 1XQ, Scotland G1 1XQ
United Kingdom

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
95
Abstract Views
511
Rank
495,746
PlumX Metrics