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Author: Herr, Jane Leber
Resulting in 3 citations.
1. Herr, Jane Leber
Fertility Effects on Women's Career Paths
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2008
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Career Patterns; Expectations/Intentions; Fertility; First Birth; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Job Satisfaction; Labor Force Participation; Maternal Employment; Motherhood; Wage Growth; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In Chapter 1, "Does it Pay to Delay? Decomposing the Effect of First Birth Timing on Women's Wage Growth", I estimate the effect of the timing of a woman's first child on her wage path, and decompose this effect to establish the mechanism by which timing affects wages. Relying on fertility instruments to address possible endogeneity, I find that a one-year delay increases women's wage growth over the first 15 years of her career by 3 to 5 percent. I then assess the mechanism by which timing affects wages by considering its intermediate effect on factors central to theories of wage growth. I find that the three most important economic channels speak to the influence of timing on the pattern of human capital accumulation: hours worked, the length of the longest labor force exit, and schooling. I also find that their relative importance varies by education. Whereas for college graduates the influence of fertility delay arises most strongly from its effect on time off from work (thus protecting human capital from depreciation), for those with less education the more relevant channel is through hours worked (the accumulation of general human capital on the job).
Bibliography Citation
Herr, Jane Leber. Fertility Effects on Women's Career Paths. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2008.
2. Herr, Jane Leber
Measuring the Effect of the Timing of First Birth on Wages
Journal of Population Economics 29,1 (January 2016): 39-72.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-015-0554-z
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Career Patterns; Expectations/Intentions; First Birth; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Labor Force Participation; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

I study the effect of first-birth timing on women's wages, defining timing in terms of labor force entry, rather than age. Considering the mechanisms by which timing may affect wages, each is a function of experience rather than age. This transformation also highlights the distinction between a first birth after labor market entry versus before. I show that estimates based on age understate the return to delay for women who remain childless at labor market entry and have obscured the negative return to delay—to a first birth after labor market entry rather than before—for all but college graduates. My results suggest, however, that these returns to first-birth timing may hold only for non-Hispanic white women.
Bibliography Citation
Herr, Jane Leber. "Measuring the Effect of the Timing of First Birth on Wages." Journal of Population Economics 29,1 (January 2016): 39-72.
3. Herr, Jane Leber
The Labor Supply Effects of Delayed First Birth
Working Paper, Department of Economics, Harvard University, December 2014
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, Harvard University
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Career Patterns; Expectations/Intentions; Fertility; First Birth; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Job Satisfaction; Labor Force Participation; Maternal Employment; Motherhood; Wage Growth; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper I explore the relationship between first-birth timing and post-birth labor supply, and how it is influenced by family and career characteristics. Given that pre-birth wages are increasing in fertility delay, the rising opportunity cost of time would suggest that later mothers work more. Yet I only find this pattern for high school graduates. For college graduates, I instead find surprisingly no relationship between first-birth timing and post-birth hours worked, despite strongly increasing pre-birth wages. Furthermore, after controlling for family and career factors, many of which influence hours worked and are correlated with fertility timing, this different pattern by education remains.
Bibliography Citation
Herr, Jane Leber. "The Labor Supply Effects of Delayed First Birth." Working Paper, Department of Economics, Harvard University, December 2014.