Search Results

Author: Killewald, Alexandra
Resulting in 17 citations.
1. Gough, Margaret
Killewald, Alexandra
Does Spacing Matter? The Effect of Child Spacing on the Cumulative Labor Force Outcomes of Mothers
Presented: Dallas, TX, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2010
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Births, Repeat / Spacing; Family History; Family Planning; Family Size; Fertility; Labor Force Participation; Maternal Employment

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

The role of first-birth timing for mothers' economic outcomes has interested researchers for some time, yet research that considers the implications of the spacing of children, in addition to the timing, is sparse. Longer birth intervals may disadvantage women by prolonging the child-rearing period and extending time out of full-time employment, or, alternatively, may advantage women by diminishing the intensity of the child-rearing period, facilitating ongoing labor force attachment. We use longitudinal data from NLSY79 and employ a matching strategy to estimate the long-term effect of long birth intervals on mothers' labor force outcomes. By doing so, we contribute to the literature on the intersection between women's fertility and their labor force outcomes, filling a gap in the literature that has disproportionately ignored the implications of decisions about higher-parity births.
Bibliography Citation
Gough, Margaret and Alexandra Killewald. "Does Spacing Matter? The Effect of Child Spacing on the Cumulative Labor Force Outcomes of Mothers." Presented: Dallas, TX, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2010.
2. Killewald, Alexandra
A Reconsideration of the Fatherhood Premium: Marriage, Coresidence, Biology, and Fathers’ Wages
American Sociological Review 78,1 (February 2013): 96-116.
Also: http://asr.sagepub.com/content/78/1/96.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Cohabitation; Fatherhood; Fathers, Biological; Marital Status; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Wage Differentials; Wages, Men

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

Past research that asserts a fatherhood wage premium often ignores the heterogeneity of fathering contexts. I expect fatherhood to produce wage gains for men if it prompts them to alter their behavior in ways that increase labor-market productivity. Identity theory predicts a larger productivity-based fatherhood premium when ties of biology, coresidence with the child, and marriage to the child’s mother reinforce one another, making fatherhood, and the role of financial provider in particular, salient, high in commitment, and clear. Employer discrimination against fathers in less normative family structures may also contribute to variation in the fatherhood premium. Using fixed-effects models and data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), I find that married, residential, biological fatherhood is associated with wage gains of about 4 percent, but unmarried residential fathers, nonresidential fathers, and stepfathers do not receive a fatherhood premium. Married residential fathers also receive no statistically significant wage premium when their wives work full-time. About 15 percent of the wage premium for married residential fathers can be explained by changes in human capital and job traits.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra. "A Reconsideration of the Fatherhood Premium: Marriage, Coresidence, Biology, and Fathers’ Wages." American Sociological Review 78,1 (February 2013): 96-116.
3. Killewald, Alexandra
Bryan, Brielle
Does Your Home Make You Wealthy?
Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2,6 (October 2016): 110-128.
Also: http://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/full/10.7758/RSF.2016.2.6.06
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Keyword(s): Ethnic Differences; Home Ownership; Modeling, Marginal Structural; Racial Differences; Wealth

Estimating the lifetime wealth consequences of homeownership is complicated by ongoing events, such as divorce or inheritance, that may shape both homeownership decisions and later-life wealth. We argue that prior research that has not accounted for these dynamic selection processes has overstated the causal effect of homeownership on wealth. Using NLSY79 data and marginal structural models, we find that each additional year of homeownership increases midlife wealth in 2008 by about $6,800, more than 25 percent less than estimates from models that do not account for dynamic selection. Hispanic and African American wealth benefits from each homeownership year are 62 percent and 48 percent as large as those of whites, respectively. Homeownership remains wealth-enhancing in 2012, but shows smaller returns. Our results confirm homeownership's role in wealth accumulation and that variation in both homeownership rates and the wealth benefits of homeownership contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in midlife wealth holdings.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Brielle Bryan. "Does Your Home Make You Wealthy?" Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2,6 (October 2016): 110-128.
4. Killewald, Alexandra
Bryan, Brielle
Falling Behind: The Black-White Wealth Gap in Life Course and Intergenerational Perspective
Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Life Course; Racial Equality/Inequality; Socioeconomic Background; Wages; Wealth

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

The black-white wealth gap in the United States is vast and increases with age. Prior research has typically taken a static approach, predicting current wealth with current individual traits or measures of social origins. This approach is ill-suited to wealth, which reflects the lifetime accumulation of resources and is a cumulative advantage process. Instead, we adopt a life-course perspective, examining the evolution of wealth across individuals' lives. We hypothesize that whites' early advantages, including higher educational attainment, more privileged social origins, and more consistent wage-earning, not only advantage young adult whites compared to their black peers, but place them on a trajectory of compounding advantage throughout their lives. Thus, social origins and early life outcomes may actually become more important determinants of racial disparities in wealth the farther into the past they recede. We evaluate these hypotheses using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and random-growth models.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Brielle Bryan. "Falling Behind: The Black-White Wealth Gap in Life Course and Intergenerational Perspective." Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015.
5. Killewald, Alexandra
Bryan, Brielle
Falling Behind: The Role of Inter- and Intragenerational Processes in Widening Racial and Ethnic Wealth Gaps through Early and Middle Adulthood
Social Forces 97,2 (1 December 2018): 705-740.
Also: https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/97/2/705/5053105
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Keyword(s): Ethnic Differences; Home Ownership; Life Course; Racial Differences; Wage Gap; Wealth

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

Whites' wealth advantage compared to blacks and Hispanics is vast and increases with age. While prior research on wealth gaps focuses primarily on wealth levels, we adopt a life-course perspective that treats wealth as a cumulative outcome and examine wealth accumulation across individuals' lives. We test to what extent intergenerational disadvantage and disparities in achieved characteristics explain accumulation disparities. We hypothesize that disparities in wealth determinants, like income and education, family and household characteristics, and homeownership and local context, increase through early and middle adulthood, widening wealth accumulation gaps. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we show that whites accumulate wealth more rapidly than blacks and Hispanics throughout early and middle adulthood, with the result that both groups fall further behind whites in amassed wealth with each passing year. Furthermore, the accumulation gap grows substantially in the 30s, so that blacks and Hispanics in this age range lose ground at an increasing annual rate. We find that adjusting for intergenerational disadvantage reduces the Hispanic-white and black-white gaps in wealth accumulated between ages 20 and 50 by over 40 percent and 50 percent, respectively, and even more in young adulthood. Yet, disparities in outcomes like income, marriage, and homeownership rise with age; together, these intragenerational processes explain a greater share of accumulation gaps in middle adulthood than at younger ages. These findings highlight that wealth gaps in the United States are both shaped by intergenerational legacies of disadvantage and created fresh in each generation through unequal distribution of achieved wealth-enhancing traits.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Brielle Bryan. "Falling Behind: The Role of Inter- and Intragenerational Processes in Widening Racial and Ethnic Wealth Gaps through Early and Middle Adulthood." Social Forces 97,2 (1 December 2018): 705-740.
6. Killewald, Alexandra
England, Paula A.
Lee, Angela Wang
Wealth and Divorce
Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Divorce; Home Ownership; Marital Stability; Modeling, Hazard/Event History/Survival/Duration; Wealth

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

Social scientists have extensively debated whether income promotes divorce by allowing individuals to exit unhappy marriages or promotes marital stability by easing financial strain. This literature has largely ignored that wealth is a distinct financial resource that may have its own effects on marital stability. We describe preliminary results from what we believe is the first examination of the effect of wealth on divorce in the United States. We use panel data from the NLSY79 and discrete-time hazard models and show that, for both blacks and whites, wealth is associated with greater marital stability, net of more commonly studied economic and background characteristics. Given prior evidence that homeownership reduces divorce risk, we test whether wealth's effects operate entirely through access to this specific asset, but find that wealth's effects are more general. We describe planned analyses to test the robustness of our findings and illuminate mechanisms responsible for the effects.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra, Paula A. England and Angela Wang Lee. "Wealth and Divorce." Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018.
7. Killewald, Alexandra
Gough, Margaret
Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?
American Sociological Review 78,3 (June 2013): 477-502.
Also: http://asr.sagepub.com/content/78/3/477.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Gender Differences; Housework/Housewives; Marriage; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Motherhood; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty; Wages, Men; Wages, Women

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

Married men’s wage premium is often attributed to within-household specialization: men can devote more effort to wage-earning when their wives assume responsibility for household labor. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of the specialization hypothesis, arguing that, if specialization causes the male marriage premium, married women should experience wage losses. Furthermore, specialization by married parents should augment the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium for married as compared to unmarried parents. Using fixed-effects models and data from the NLSY79, we estimate within-gender differences in wages according to marital status and between-gender differences in the associations between marital status and wages. We then test whether specialization on time use, job traits, and tenure accounts for the observed associations. Results for women do not support the specialization hypothesis. Childless men and women both receive a marriage premium. Marriage augments the fatherhood premium but not the motherhood penalty. Changes in own and spousal employment hours, job traits, and tenure appear to benefit both married men and women, although men benefit more. Marriage changes men’s labor market behavior in ways that augment wages, but these changes do not appear to occur at the expense of women’s wages.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Margaret Gough. "Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?" American Sociological Review 78,3 (June 2013): 477-502.
8. Killewald, Alexandra
Gough, Margaret
Estimating the Impact of Marriage on Women's Wages
Presented: Dallas, TX, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2010
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Coresidence; Cost-Benefit Studies; Gender; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Gender Differences; Income; Income Distribution; Marriage; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Sex Equality; Unions; Wage Gap; Wages; Wives, Work; Women's Roles

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

The costs and benefits of marriage for women are influenced in part by the effect of marriage on women's earnings potential, yet the wage premium or penalty for married women has been relatively ignored. The theory of within-household specialization predicts that women's wages will fall upon entry into coresidential unions as their time in household labor rises and their labor market effort falls. If this is the case, marriage contributes to sex stratification by exacerbating the gender gap in pay and reducing wives' bargaining power within the household. We use data from the NLSY79 and fixed-effects models to assess the marriage premium or penalty for women. In contrast to the specialization model, we find that women have higher wages in the years after their entry into marriage, suggesting that marriage need not be a zero-sum game between spouses in terms of their labor market rewards.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Margaret Gough. "Estimating the Impact of Marriage on Women's Wages." Presented: Dallas, TX, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2010.
9. Killewald, Alexandra
Harvey, Hope
The Effect of Maternal Employment Experiences on Adolescent Outcomes
Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2016
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Children, Well-Being; College Enrollment; Educational Attainment; High School Completion/Graduates; Maternal Employment; Obesity; Smoking (see Cigarette Use)

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

Prior research on the consequences of maternal employment for children's well-being has predominantly evaluated effects of early maternal employment on young children's outcomes. We conceptualize children as exposed to a 17-year trajectory of maternal employment and hypothesize that cumulative maternal employment will positively affect offspring's health and educational attainment in young adulthood, measured by obesity, smoking, high school graduation, and college enrollment. To test this hypothesis, we link data on women's employment histories from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) with the young adult outcomes of their children, collected in the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults study. Using marginal structural models and inverse probability of treatment weights, we account for the fact that maternal employment both affects and is affected by other family characteristics and provide the most accurate estimates to date of the cumulative, long-term effects of maternal employment on offspring life chances.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Hope Harvey. "The Effect of Maternal Employment Experiences on Adolescent Outcomes." Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2016.
10. Killewald, Alexandra
Lee, Angela
England, Paula A.
Wealth and Divorce
Demography 60,1 (February 2023): 147-171.
Also: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48711996
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s):

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

In the United States, wealthier couples have lower divorce risk. Wealth may stabilize marriage through its material value, especially by easing financial stress, or by providing symbolic resources, especially signaling that couples meet normative financial standards for marriage. We first show that the negative association between wealth and divorce holds net of a rich set of controls. All else being equal, having $40,000 in wealth rather than $0 is associated with as big a decline in average predicted divorce risk as having no nonmarital births versus at least one. Second, we show that the negative association between wealth and divorce risk is steepest at low positive wealth levels. Net of covariates, having $40,000 in wealth rather than $0 is associated with as big a decline in average predicted divorce risk as having $400,000 rather than $40,000. Third, we consider evidence for the symbolic perspective, which emphasizes the stabilizing role of owning visible physical assets, and the material perspective, which suggests unsecured debt heightens divorce risk. Consistent with the symbolic perspective, we find that with net worth held constant, ownership of homes and vehicles is negatively associated with divorce risk. However, more research is needed to fully adjudicate between the symbolic and material perspectives.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra, Angela Lee and Paula A. England. "Wealth and Divorce." Demography 60,1 (February 2023): 147-171.
11. Killewald, Alexandra
Lundberg, Ian
How Do Married Men Get Ahead? A Process-Based Examination of the Male Marriage Premium
Presented: Boston MA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2014
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Employment, History; Husbands; Marriage; Work Experience; Work Hours/Schedule

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

The wage premium for married men is well-documented. Prior research has concentrated on understanding why this might be so, focusing on the role of household specialization. Largely absent from this research is attention to the job processes by which married men realize wage gains. We propose three possible pathways: (1) increased work experience, (2) improved employment histories, including longer job tenure and better job match, and (3) moves to higher-paying job types. We find that each of these processes contributes to the male marriage premium, although work experience is the most important. We further find that increases in work experience benefit married men about equally, regardless of wives’ labor supply, casting doubt on a pure specialization explanation. Lastly, we demonstrate the importance of flexibly specifying mediating variables: Conventional measures of work experience substantially understate the share of the marriage premium attributable to changes in work hours.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Ian Lundberg. "How Do Married Men Get Ahead? A Process-Based Examination of the Male Marriage Premium." Presented: Boston MA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2014.
12. Killewald, Alexandra
Lundberg, Ian
New Evidence against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium
Presented: Seattle WA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2016
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Husbands, Income; Marriage; Transition, Adulthood; Wage Dynamics; Wages; Wages, Men

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

Marriage is associated with increases in men's wages. Recent research claims the long-term wage benefits of marriage for men are as high as 20 percent and begin prior to marriage, as men anticipate marriage or experience wage benefits of unmarried partnership. We argue instead that marriage has no causal effect on men's wages in either the short or long term and that research on the marriage wage premium has overlooked literature in other subfields suggesting that marriage occurs when wages are already rising unusually rapidly. A vast literature documents that entrance into marriage depends on economic circumstances, suggesting that effects may flow from wages to marriage, rather than the reverse. Furthermore, the demographic literature on the transition to adulthood suggests that emerging adulthood is a time of both union formation and unusually rapid improvements in work outcomes. Using data from the NLSY79, we evaluate these perspectives, considering both the effects of getting married and remaining married. We conclude that the observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying at a time that their wages are already rising more rapidly than expected and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Ian Lundberg. "New Evidence against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium." Presented: Seattle WA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2016.
13. Killewald, Alexandra
Lundberg, Ian
New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium
Demography 54,3 (June 2017): 1007-1028.
Also: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-017-0566-2
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Husbands, Income; Marriage; Wage Dynamics; Wages, Men

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

Recent research has shown that men's wages rise more rapidly than expected prior to marriage, but interpretations diverge on whether this indicates selection or a causal effect of anticipating marriage. We seek to adjudicate this debate by bringing together literatures on (1) the male marriage wage premium; (2) selection into marriage based on men’s economic circumstances; and (3) the transition to adulthood, during which both union formation and unusually rapid improvements in work outcomes often occur. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we evaluate these perspectives. We show that wage declines predate rather than follow divorce, indicating no evidence that staying married benefits men's wages. We find that older grooms experience no unusual wage patterns at marriage, suggesting that the observed marriage premium may simply reflect co-occurrence with the transition to adulthood for younger grooms. We show that men entering shotgun marriages experience similar premarital wage gains as other grooms, casting doubt on the claim that anticipation of marriage drives wage increases. We conclude that the observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying when their wages are already rising more rapidly than expected and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Ian Lundberg. "New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium." Demography 54,3 (June 2017): 1007-1028.
14. Killewald, Alexandra
Pfeffer, Fabian T.
For Richer: The Effects of Marriage on Wealth Accumulation
Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Marriage; Modeling, Marginal Structural; Wealth

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

We investigate the effects of marriage on individuals' midlife wealth. Establishing the importance of marriage as a wealth-generating process is challenging because marriage and wealth are dynamic processes with reciprocal effects: marriage is both the result of prior wealth and a potential determinant of future wealth. To estimate the total causal effect of years spent married on wealth, we therefore apply marginal structural models. Using the NLSY79, we show that time spent married has positive effects on individuals' wealth at midlife but that accounting for dynamic selection into and out of marriage reduces these effects substantially. Ignoring the asset-pooling effect of marriage, the effects of marriage on wealth are small. However, the effects are also heterogeneous: women and whites gain more in absolute terms from each additional year spent married than do men and African Americans.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Fabian T. Pfeffer. "For Richer: The Effects of Marriage on Wealth Accumulation." Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018.
15. Killewald, Alexandra
Zhu, Fangsheng
Does Your Home Make You Wealthy?
Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Home Ownership; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Life Course; Racial Equality/Inequality; Wealth

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

Wealth inequality in the United States is vast, and homeownership is hypothesized to be one key mechanism by which wealth accumulates unequally. Evaluating the effect of homeownership on later-life wealth is challenging, however, because prior wealth affects transitions to homeownership, and homeownership in turn has the potential to affect other wealth-relevant traits, such as marital status. Thus, conventional regression models that predict current wealth as a function of prior homeownership are likely to overestimate the causal effect of homeownership. We propose to provide a more rigorous estimate of the effect of homeownership on later-life wealth by using NLSY79 data and inverse probability of treatment weights to model dynamic selection processes into and out of homeownership across the life course. Our results then provide insight about the potential for disparities in homeownership rates by race and social origins to contribute to persistent racial wealth inequality and the intergenerational transmission of advantage.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Fangsheng Zhu. "Does Your Home Make You Wealthy?" Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015.
16. Killewald, Alexandra
Zhuo, Xiaolin
Mothers' Long-Term Employment Patterns
Presented: Chicago IL, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2015
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Employment, Part-Time; Life Course; Maternal Employment; Racial Differences

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

Previous research on maternal employment has disproportionately focused on the experiences of married, college-educated mothers and examined either current employment status or return to work immediately following a birth. Drawing on the life course perspective, we instead conceptualize maternal careers as long-term life course patterns. Using data from the NLSY79 and optimal matching, we document five common employment patterns of American mothers over the first 18 years of maternity. About 60% experience either steady, full-time employment (41%) or steady nonemployment (20%). The rest experience "mixed" patterns: long-term part-time employment (14%), or a long period of nonemployment following maternity, then a return to employment approximately 6 (15%) or 12 (10%) years following the first birth. We find that consistent employment following maternity, either full-time or part-time, is characteristic of women with more economic advantages, while women who experience low levels of employment disproportionately lack a high school degree and are more likely to be Hispanic. Consistent part-time labor is distinctive to white women: Hispanic and African American women are underrepresented in this group compared to either consistent full-time employment or long-term nonemployment. Furthermore, race is one of the only predictors of whether a mother is employed consistently full-time versus part-time. Our results support the importance of studying maternal employment across the economic spectrum, considering motherhood as a long-term characteristic, and moving away from research approaches that consider employment as a binary or continuous measure and overlook the qualitative distinctness of particular employment patterns.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Xiaolin Zhuo. "Mothers' Long-Term Employment Patterns." Presented: Chicago IL, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2015.
17. Killewald, Alexandra
Zhuo, Xiaolin
U.S. Mothers' Long-Term Employment Patterns
Demography 56,1 (February 2019): 285-320.
Also: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-018-0745-9
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Employment, Part-Time; Labor Force Participation; Maternal Employment

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

Previous research on maternal employment has disproportionately focused on the immediate postpartum period and typically modeled either cross-sectional employment status or time until a specific employment transition. We instead conceptualize maternal employment as a long-term pattern, extending the observation window and embedding employment statuses in temporal context. Using data from NLSY79 and sequence analysis, we document five common employment patterns of American mothers over the first 18 years of maternity. Three typical patterns revolve around a single employment status: full-time (36 %), part-time (13 %), or nonemployment (21 %); the other two patterns are characterized by 6 (15 %) or 11 (14 %) years of nonemployment, followed by a period of transition and then full-time employment. Analyses of the immediate postpartum period cannot distinguish between the nonemployment and reentry groups, which have different employment experiences and different prematernity characteristics. Next, we describe how mothers' human capital, attitudes and cultural models, family experiences, and race/ethnicity are associated with the employment patterns they follow, elucidating that these characteristics may be associated not only with how much mothers work but also the patterning of their employment. Our results support studying maternal employment as a long-term pattern and employing research approaches that address the qualitative distinctness of these diverse patterns.
Bibliography Citation
Killewald, Alexandra and Xiaolin Zhuo. "U.S. Mothers' Long-Term Employment Patterns." Demography 56,1 (February 2019): 285-320.