Women’s Labour Market Outcomes before and after Live and Non-Live Births

Alessandro Di Nallo , Bocconi University

Previous research has shown that childbearing is associated with long-term reduc- tion in women’s hourly wages. These studies did not address whether a pregnancy loss has a negative influence as well. This represents an important knowledge gap, given that miscarriages and stillbirths concern between 10 to 20 percent of pregnancies in high-income countries. Drawing on 12 waves (2009/2010–2021/2022) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, I use fixed-effects linear regression models to exam- ine changes in women’s working hours and income before, during, and after pregnan- cies ending with a successful delivery and pregnancies interrupted by a miscarriage or a stillbirth. The findings indicate that women’s hourly income decreased because of pregnancy loss. The results also show that the outcomes of women who success- fully completed their pregnancy did not return to baseline levels; comparatively, the hourly labour income of women who experienced an episode of pregnancy loss grad- ually decayed, although to a smaller extent. I further explore some mechanisms that may explain the patterns of deterioration of women’s labour market outcomes.

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 Presented in Session 27. Flash session 1 Economics, Human Capital and Labour Markets