CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Cukrowska, Ewa |
|---|---|
| Title | Investigating the motherhood penalty in a post-communist economy: Evidence from Poland |
| Summary | The study provides evidence on the existence of the motherhood penalty in 2003-2009 time period in Poland. Several estimation methods are used to account for women’s selection into motherhood. In particular, the effect of children on women’s wages is obtained from the OLS estimation, fixed effects model and matching approach. The OLS estimation provides the estimate of 4% lower wages of women who have at least one child. The fixed effects model, which corrects for time-invariant unmeasured differences between mothers and non-mothers results in 13% lower wages of mothers. The average treatment effect based on the propensity score matching performed on the observed characteristics of mothers and non-mothers is consistent with the OLS estimation. Similarly, the effect found by the fixed effects estimation applied to the matched sample, which is obtained from the matching performed on pre-motherhood characteristics, is close to the initial fixed effects finding. Additionally, estimation of non-linear effects of children is provided. The findings suggest that there is little difference between the negative effect of one and two children; the difference occurs in case of three children and more. Moreover, the estimation of the bounds of the effect, that takes into account mother’s selection into employment, is adapted. The bounding estimation suggests that there is high selection into working: women who earn low wages are more likely to drop out of the labor market once they become mothers. Consequently, if the employment selection could be accounted for, the effects would be even more negative. |
| Supervisor | Telegdy, Álmos |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/cukrowska_ewa.pdf |
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