Childbearing and Wives' Foregone Earnings. Project Report [microform] / Charles A. Calhoun and Thomas J. Espenshade.
This report combines the techniques of multistate life table analysis with the human capital theory of wages to derive new estimates of the impact of children on hours of market work and earnings for American women aged 15 to 55 years old. The impact of fertility on female labor force behavior is an...
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| Corporate Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Microfilm Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
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Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse,
1986.
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| Summary: | This report combines the techniques of multistate life table analysis with the human capital theory of wages to derive new estimates of the impact of children on hours of market work and earnings for American women aged 15 to 55 years old. The impact of fertility on female labor force behavior is analyzed, and opportunity expenditures (the money value of foregone employment opportunities) associated with different childbearing patterns is examined. The relative impacts of race, school enrollment, educational attainment, marital status, marital status changes, and birth cohorts are also considered. Among the findings are the following: (1) with identical childbearing patterns, white women forego roughly five times as much as black women in market earnings--approximately $25,000 per birth for white women, and $5,000 per birth for black women; (2) foregone hours of market work per birth are two to three times higher for white women than for black women--approximately 1,500 to 3,000 hours per birth for white women, and 600 to 1,000 hours per birth for black women; (3) opportunity expenditures for white women have been declining over time; (4) for women of similar background and labor market experience, opportunity expenditures on children are roughly proportional to the number of births; and (5) it is the labor supply reductions immediately following each birth that contribute most to observed opportunity expenditures, whereas the effect of total family size is small by comparison. Data are presented on 13 tables. Twenty-six endnotes and 88 references are included. (Author/BJV) |
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| Item Description: | Sponsoring Agency: National Inst. of Child Health and Human Development (NIH), Bethesda, MD. Center for Population Research. Contract Number: NICHHD-N01-HD-12820. ERIC Document Number: ED297052. |
| Physical Description: | 57 pages. |
| Reproduction Note: | Microfiche. |
| Action Note: | committed to retain |