Massimiliano BRATTI and Elena Claudia MERONI Competence Centre on Microeconomic Evaluation (CC-ME) European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Motherhood postponement and wages in Europe Keywords: motherhood postponement, wages, Europe It is not rare nowadays to see women having their first child in was a sharp increase in the age at first motherhood. Multiple fac-

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their thirties. Starting from the 80s, in almost all countries there tors have been advocated to explain this trend. Some scholars tional response to reduce the wage penalty that they suffer in the labor market once they become mothers. We bring this hypothesis to the data, and provide comparative evidence for a large set of European countries using very homogenous data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey.

Wage postponemt premia 0 .01 .02

have put forward that delaying childbearing may be women’s ra-

year delay in motherhood) related to wages (Fig. 1). In some countries delaying first childbearing by one year may produce an

SE SI IS NO SK EE DK BE LT FI BG FR CZ NL AT MT HR RO EL IT HU LV ES LU UK CH IE CY PT PL DE

premia” (i.e. the percentage wage increase produced by a one-

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Our analysis shows a high variability in the “postponement

Country

increase in wages as high as 2.5% (Germany or Poland), while in other countries the effect can be negative. We provide some

Fig. 1. Effect of maternal age at first birth on (log) gross-hourly

evidence that these premia are related to the policies and institu-

wages (our estimates on EU-SILC)

tions in place in the different countries. Namely, the wage gains from postponing motherhood are larger in countries lacking family friendly policies and in more traditional societies, and smaller in countries promoting higher gender equality.

Key Findings •

‘’Postponement premia” are highly heterogeneous across European countries.

•

Larger “postponement premia” are observed in countries lacking family friendly policies and in more traditional societies.

Policy implications On the one hand women may be pushed to delay childbearing in response to the wage penalty mothers suffer in the labor market, on the other hand motherhood delaying may prevent women from reaching their desired number of children. Our preliminary descriptive analysis suggests that adoption of family friendly policies and a more equal distribution of home responsabilities between genders may help women reconcile family and work, even when they are still young. Further analysis is, however, needed to qualify the descriptive evidence provided in our paper as causal.

Bratti, M., Meroni, E. and Pronzato, C. (2017). Motherhood postponment and wages in Europe. ifo DICE Report 15 (2), 2017, 31-37.