Workplace Breastfeeding and Maternal Employment

This paper investigates the impact of workplace breastfeeding laws on the labor supply of mothers. We exploit a unique setting, when throughout 1998-2009 states in the US introduced laws requiring employers to provide break time and a private room for women to express milk or breastfeed. Our results show an increase in breastfeeding initiation and the probability that a child was breastfed at three and six months after birth. We find that workplace breastfeeding significantly increase maternal employment by 4% when children are in breastfeeding age.