2004•Padua Research Archive (University of Padova)Requires access
Women's employment around childbirth
Donata Favaro
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Abstract
We model the decisions of pre -fertility participation, fertility and after-childbirth participation of married Italian women selected in year 1998 from the sample of the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). We estimate the probability of having a child conditional on both labour market participation and non-labour market participation the year before childbirth as well as the probability of participation two years after childbirth. We control for the correlation between unobserved individual characteristics affecting both the probability of having a job, the probability of having a child and the probability to work two years after childbirth. The results demonstrate that estimating postchildbirth employment without controlling for selection into pre-childbirth employment gives biased estimates because of the correlation between unobservable characteristics.