מחקר

Employment, Earnings, and the Motherhood Penalty among Israeli Ethno-Religious Groups

Michelle Budig, University of

Massachusetts-Amherst.Vered

Kraus, University of HaifaAsaf

Levanon; University of HaifaCorresponding author: Asaf Levanon - alevanon@univ.haifa.ac.i

Israeli society presents a unique context for studying the impacts of motherhood on employment and earnings: it is characterized by high fertility and marriage rates, along with high female education and employment rates. In addition, Israel’s rich ethno-religious diversity offers an unexplored case to examine intersectional differences in the effects of motherhood on employment and earnings. Few studies have examined simultaneously the factors shaping mothers’ post-birth employment and earnings trajectories. We address these issues through analyses of newly available Israeli panel data. We find that less educated women incur higher penalties for motherhood with respect to employment and wages. Moreover, ethno-religious disparities are greatest among the least educated women. Comparatively, highly educated women incur smaller motherhood penalties in employment and earnings, and in some cases receive wage premiums for children. Public sector employment, particularly among Muslims, contributes to these positive impacts of children on pay.

Do Israeli Mothers Pay a Penalty for Childbirth During their Life Course?

Dr. Levanon, Asaf. University of Haifa Professor Kraus, Vered. University of Haifa Professor Budig, Michelle. University of Massachusetts-Amherst .

2017-2021; United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

Women generally experience a decline in their wages as they become mothers. The motherhood wage penalty has been shown to remain even after extensively controlling for differences among women with varying numbers of children in demographic, human capital and labor market characteristics. While information on personal characteristics underlying the motherhood penalty is rapidly accumulating, evidence on contextual and institutional variation in the penalty lags behind. Specifically, studies broadening the scope of analysis to developing or non-western developed countries are scarce, with information on ethnic gaps in the motherhood penalty being especially limited. Furthermore, although work characteristics received considerable attention in the literature, prior studies used data that allows examining only occupational features and not workplace attributes. We address these limitations by using a unique data source that combines a sample of respondents drawn from four consecutive census samples (1972; 1983; 1995; 2008), matched to yearly administrative data from several government institutions such as the Ministry of the Interior, the Israeli National Insurance Institute, the Israeli Tax authority, and the Council for Higher Education. Using fixed effects, we will specifically document the impact of spousal and workplace characteristics on the gap, as well as differences in the motherhood gap across ethnic/national groups and across cohorts. Examining these contextual variations in a diverse society like Israel, where the labor market behavior of mothers closely matches that of their counterparts in other advanced economies, while their fertility patterns are markedly different, will contribute to our understanding of the structural process that generate life-time earnings motherhood penalties.