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Women’s Short-Term Employment Trajectories Following Birth: Patterns, Determinants, and Variations by Race/Ethnicity and Nativity

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Demography

Abstract

Despite a large literature documenting the impact of childbearing on women’s wages, less understanding exists of the actual employment trajectories that mothers take and the circumstances surrounding different paths. We use sequence analysis to chart the entire employment trajectory for a diverse sample of U.S. women by race/ethnicity and nativity in the first year following childbirth. Using data from the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and sample selection models, we find that women employed before childbirth show a high degree of labor market continuity. However, a notable share of them (24 %) took less stable paths by dropping out or scaling back work. In addition, mothers’ attachment to the labor force is simultaneously supported by personal endowments and family resources yet constrained by economic hardship and job characteristics. Moreover, mothers’ employment patterns differ by race/ethnicity and nativity. Nonwhite women (blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) who were employed before childbirth exhibited greater labor market continuation than white women. For immigrant women, those with a shorter length of residence were more likely to curtail employment than native-born women, but those with longer duration of residence show greater labor force attachment. We discuss the implications of these findings for income inequality and public policy.

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Notes

  1. For parsimony, we use white and black hereafter to indicate non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black, respectively.

  2. In 2010, 63.7 % of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white, 12.2 % was non-Hispanic black, 16.3 % was Hispanic, and 4.7 % was Asian; the foreign-born comprised 12.9 % of the national population (U.S. Census Bureau 2010, 2011a).

  3. Considerable heterogeneity exists among Asian ethnicities. SIPP does not allow for disaggregating among Asians. But to the extent that SIPP is nationally representative, the majority of Asians in the sample are from advantaged groups.

  4. The 1996 panel has four years and began with a nationally representative sample of 36,730 households. The 2001, 2004, and 2008 panels have, respectively, three, four, and five years, with an initial sample of 35,100, 43,500, and 42,000 households.

  5. This pattern is also supported by the SIPP data: more than 85 % of mothers remained employed in the three months before childbirth.

  6. Self-employment in SIPP includes different scales of business, from large-scale business to freelance work.

  7. The number of births in each panel is 1,782 (1996); 1,099 (2001); 1,649 (2004); and 1,937 (2008).

  8. We do not weight the analysis because the selection models do not allow for weights. As a sensitivity analysis, we estimated weighted multinomial regressions. The substantive results remain with or without weights.

  9. Section 3 of Online Resource 1 presents the state distribution plots by including unpaid leave as a separate employment state.

  10. The sample size in the selection models includes mothers who did not work before birth (N = 4,522), mothers in the base category (full-time employment; N = 3,659), and mothers in one of the three comparison categories. Take the first column (Model 1), for example: the total sample size is 4,522 + 3,659 + 1,277 (mothers who worked mostly part-time) = 9,458.

  11. We test for interactions between race/ethnicity and nativity. The interaction terms are nonsignificant across different clusters. This provides some evidence that the variability by race/ethnicity holds for both natives and immigrants, and the native-immigrant difference applies to both minorities and whites.

  12. We test whether the independent variables differentiate between the withdrawal and transition into the part-time group. Results show that the difference in independent variables is statistically significant at the .05 level for education, job tenure, wage, extended family arrangement, and family income. These findings suggest that withdrawal and transition into part-time are distinct pathways for mothers and that the decisions are differentially influenced by a host of individual- and family-level factors.

  13. We conduct a sensitivity analysis that includes income as a categorical variable and omits the poverty variable (because it is collinear with the low-income category). The nonlinear relationship between income and employment trajectories is confirmed, with both low- and high-income categories associated with a greater likelihood of labor market discontinuation. For the main analysis, we include the linear income variable together with poverty status because the latter is an especially important indicator of mothers’ employment and carries significant policy implications.

  14. The interaction between race/ethnicity and family income is significant. White and Asian mothers are especially responsive to family income. Comparatively, family income is not significantly associated with black mothers’ employment decisions. For Hispanic women, family income is not associated with the withdrawal decision but facilitates part-time employment.

  15. This difference could also occur because our sample consists of more recent cohorts of women, whereas previous research focused on an older cohort of women with different employment behaviors. In addition, the difference could be explained by methods, with previous research including women unattached to the labor force before childbirth or focusing on a longer time frame.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Silke Aisenbrey, Anette Fasang, Jane Waldfogel, and anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions at various stages of this project. Yao Lu gratefully acknowledges support from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (1K01HD073318), and the Columbia Population Research Center with funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD058486). An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the Population Association of American, Washington, DC; and at a meeting of the ISA Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility, Singapore, 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 606 W. 122nd St, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Yao Lu

  2. Department of Social Work and Social Administration, the University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

    Julia Shu-Huah Wang

  3. Silver School of Social Work, New York University, 1 Washington Square North, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Wen-Jui Han

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Lu, Y., Wang, J.SH. & Han, WJ. Women’s Short-Term Employment Trajectories Following Birth: Patterns, Determinants, and Variations by Race/Ethnicity and Nativity. Demography 54, 93–118 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-016-0541-3

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