Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione (Popdays), Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione 2019

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Employment transitions around the birth of the 1st child: the experience of women born between 1920 and 1969 in Italy.
Francesca Fiori, Giorgio Di Gessa

##manager.scheduler.building##: Velodromo - Bocconi University
##manager.scheduler.room##: N01
Date: 2019-01-26 09:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Last modified: 2018-12-26

Abstract


Although levels of female employment in Western countries have increased, women often abandon the labour market when they have a child due to persisting difficulties in combining work and family life. This study focusses on Italy and investigates the factors associated with a) the likelihood of leaving employment around the birth of the first child; and b) the likelihood of never returning to work after the birth of the first child – for mothers who left employment. It pays attention to the influence of their personal, household and wider contextual characteristics, and it exploits detailed information on their jobs before becoming mothers.

We use data from the ISTAT Survey on ‘Family and Social Relations 2009’, whose retrospective design allows the reconstruction of fertility and employment histories over the life course, and select women born between 1920 and 1969, who had at least one child and who were working before the birth of their first child.

Our findings show that higher educated women, and women employed in female-dominated occupations within the public sector are less likely to leave employment. On the other hand, the decision of whether or not returning to work after an interruption depends solely on personal characteristics.


Keywords


Italy, maternal employment, childbirth