The Mommy Effect: Do Women Anticipate the Employment Effects of Motherhood?

By Ilyana Kuziemko, Jessica Pan, Jenny Shen, Ebonya Washington After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial...