Study: Returning to work after childbirth

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More Canadian women have gone back to work after giving birth to a child during the past two decades, and fewer have quit their jobs, according to a new study.

However, both long- and short-term employment rates of mothers were consistently lower than those of other working women between 1984 and 2004.

The study, published today in the online edition of Perspectives on Labour and Income, examined the impact of childbirth on employment and earnings, using data from the Longitudinal Workers File, a random sample of all Canadian workers. The findings show that changes in maternity leave have a virtually immediate effect on women's labour market behaviour.

The mothers in this study were aged 20 to 39 in the year they gave birth. They were employed before giving birth and had experienced no other job separation that year. In the previous year, they had worked and had not given birth.

The study found that short-term employment rates of successive cohorts of mothers increased from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s. They started to decline in the early 2000s.

For example, among mothers who gave birth in 1984, the employment rate in the first year after childbirth was 84%. The rate reached 91% among those giving birth in 1999, then dropped to between 87% and 88% for those giving birth just after the turn of the millennium.

Longer-term employment rates were also compared. For example, in 2004, the employment rate among women who had had a child three years earlier in 2001 was 84%. The corresponding employment rate of other working women was 91%.

The study said it is not surprising that the post-childbirth employment rates of mothers were generally lower than those of other women because the birth of a child increases the marginal costs and reduces the marginal benefits of working.

The study also found that women who gave birth were less likely to withdraw from the labour market during post-childbirth years in the early 2000s than in the mid-1980s.

For example, about 8% of mothers who gave birth in the mid- and late 1980s quit the labour market in the first three years after childbirth. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the proportion was less than 6%.

Mothers also experienced a strong decline in earnings during the year following childbirth, and these declines increased over time, the study found.

During the 1980s, the birth of a child lowered earnings of the mother by about 28% in the year that the child was born. This decline accelerated to 30% in the 1990s and to about 33% after 2000.

Earnings declines persisted into the post-childbirth years. For example, in the first year after childbirth, the mother's earnings dropped between 14% and 18% before 2001 and between 37% and 39% since then.

The decline in earnings in the year of childbirth and in the first year thereafter was likely related to longer maternity leaves and more generous benefits. For example, beginning in 2001, mothers were able to take at least 52 weeks of maternity leave and receive Employment Insurance benefits for up to 50 weeks.

Those who give birth in the early part of a year are able to collect the benefits for almost a whole year; those giving birth late in the year can collect for most of the following year. As a result, the decline in earnings during the year of childbirth as well as in the first year thereafter are now higher than for mothers who gave birth before 2001.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey numbers, including related surveys, 3701 and 3889.

The article, "Returning to work after childbirth," is now available in the December 2007 online edition of Perspectives on Labour and Income, Vol. 8, no. 12 (75-001-XWE, free), from the Publications module of our website.

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Xuelin Zhang (613-951-4295; xuelin.zhang@statcan.gc.ca), Business and Labour Market Analysis Division, Statistics Canada.