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To examine the association between women's wages and the availability of flexible work hours and company-provided child care, three sets of alternative hypotheses are tested. First, the availability of such policies might be positively related to the wages of women and associated with a decrease in child wage penalties. Using Ordinary Least Squares and fixed effects models, this study finds evidence to support this, substantiating the belief that working women with the provisions of such policies receive higher wages than working women without the provisions. In addition, the wage premiums associated with such policies sufficiently offset the well-known child wage penalty.

Second, the wage effects associated with such policies will still be persistent, even after controlling for a wide range of confounding covariates, including demographic variable, human capital, and job characteristics. Using the longitudinal data to control for such confounding covariates, this dissertation finds that different accumulations of human capital, in part, account for wage differentials between women who have such policy provisions and women who do not. But, the significant wage premiums created by flexible work hours and company-provided child care are still substantial, even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and job characteristics. Moreover, the association between the provision of such policies and women's wages vary by industry and occupation.

Third, there might be causal relationship between the provisions of such policies and higher wages of working women and both might be due to time-invariant, unobserved heterogeneity. Using fixed effects models, this dissertation finds very little evidence to support this.

To test the differential effects of flexible work hours and company-provided child care on wages of women, this study uses propensity score matching and finds wage premiums for both working mothers and nonmothers (flexible work hours) and for only working mothers (company-provided child care). Moreover, combining the matching and regression adjustment on the matched sample, this study finds significantly and substantially lower wages for working mothers than their nonmother counterparts, as a result of motherhood status, when both groups have the availability of such policies as well as when both groups do not have such policies.

The primary policy implication of this study is that developing and expanding flexible work hours and child care provisions should create a better balance between parental employment and family responsibilities and, as a consequence, a secure source of income undiluted by a wage penalty for motherhood. Other policy implications are that enriching family benefit packages, such as more generous child-related leave and tax and benefit policies, would help address the balance between work and family needs, serving to increase the wages not only for working women but for women in general. Finding new venues that reconcile the roles of government with work organizations is proposed to create greater balance between work and family life for working women.