The Long-term Effects of Maternal Employment on Daughters’ Later Labour Force Participation and Earnings

Abstract

This paper investigates the long-term effects of maternal labour force participation on daughters’ later labour force participation and earnings. The majority of the existing work in this area investigates how current maternal labour force participation affects current child outcomes, including scholastic, behavioural and health outcomes. The Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD), a 20 percent random sample of Canadian tax filers provides a unique opportunity to link information regarding a mother’s labour force participation from the birth of a daughter onward, to the daughter’s own labour force participation in later years. We find that maternal employment is correlated with both an increased likelihood of working and increased earnings, but that no long term effects remain once unobserved heterogeneity is addressed. These findings call into question the growing concern that a large body of research has raised regarding the negative impacts of maternal employment on child outcomesmaternal employment, earnings, labour force participation