AME Labour Economics Seminar, at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI).

Diogo Britto from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, presents Parenthood and Productivity, a paper written together with C. de Holanda, B. Ferman, A. Fonseca, B. Sampaio and L. Warwar.

This is an in-person only event.

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Abstract

Child penalties explain a sizable part of the gender gap in labor market outcomes. One key question for which we have very limited evidence is whether such penalties can be explained by productivity losses following parenthood. We provide evidence from a unique setting which allows us to overcome two crucial challenges in estimating the impacts of child birth on productivity. First, we study this question for a group of workers who do not decrease labor supply in response to child birth, so that we can measure productivity for all parents before and after child birth. Second, our setting allows us to precisely measure productivity. We find that child birth leads only to a short-lived reduction in productivity for mothers, and discuss the external validity of our findings and implications for policies addressing the gender gap.