Mothers' long-run career patterns after first birth

Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter, Christoph Pamminger, Andrea Weber, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Using Bayesian Markov chain clustering analysis we investigate career paths of Austrian women after their first birth. This data-driven method allows characterizing long-term career paths of mothers over up to 19 years by transitions between parental leave, non-employment and different forms of employment. We classify women into five cluster groups with very different long-run career trajectories after childbearing. We further model group membership with a multinomial specification within the finite mixture model. This approach gives insights into the determinants of long-run outcomes. In particular, giving birth at an older age appears to be associated with very diverse outcomes: it is related to higher odds of dropping out of the labour force, on the one hand, but also to higher odds of reaching a high wage career track, on the other hand.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)707-725
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society
Volume179
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Family gap
  • Fertility
  • Markov chain Monte Carlo methods
  • Multinomial logit
  • Panel data
  • Timing of birth
  • Transition data

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