Eva M. Berger
The findings of the previous economic literature on mothers' transition into employment after childbirth suggest that individuals' characteristics are much more important determinants than the institutional background. Another strand of recent literature found that noncognitive skills play an important role in economic and social success. Building on these two strands of literature, the present paper investigates how noncognitive traits affect the duration of time until a mother enters employment after first childbirth. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and referring to the concepts of Locus of Control and the Big Five personality traits, a discrete semi-parametric survival model is estimated incorporating a discrete mixture distribution to summarize unobserved individual heterogeneity. The results indicate that women with a high score on Agreeableness return to employment later. The effects of Extraversion and Locus of Control are found to be inversely U-shaped. Individuals at both extremes of these traits enter employment later than individuals with moderate traits.
Themen: Arbeit und Beschäftigung
JEL-Classification: J22;J24
Keywords: Noncognitive skills, personality, maternal employment, female labor supply, survival analysis
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