Does a Mother's Early Return to Work after Childbirth Improve Her Future Employment Status?*

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Wataru Kureishi,Colin McKenzie,Kei Sakata,Midori Wakabayashi
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12246

Does a Mother’s Early Return to Work after

Childbirth Improve Her Future Employment

Status?*

Wataru Kureishi,

1

*Colin McKenzie,

2

Kei Sakata

3

and Midori Wakabayashi

4

We examine whether a mother’s early return to work after her first birth improves her

employment status in the short term and the long term (3 and 10/12 years after the child’s

birth). Specifically, this research investigates whether a mother is more likely to be in

full-time employment if she returns to work within 1 year of childbirth (i.e. without using

her allowable parental leave to the full). We estimate recursive bivariate probit models for

a mother’s early return to work and her subsequent employment status using July births

as an instrument. Our approach is unique in that we shed light on the relationship

between the timing of a birth (birth month) and the timing of a mother’s return to work

after childbirth. The birth month affects the cut-off dates for admission into a licensed

childcare facility in Japan, which, in turn, affects the timing of a mother’s return to work.

Our empirical evidence reveals that a mother’s early return to work after her first birth

has a positive causal effect on the likelihood of her being in full-time employment in the

long term (10 and 12 years after childbirth). We do not find any causal effect of an early

return to work on working full time in the short term (3 years after childbirth).

Keywords: bivariate probit model, childcare, employment, parental leave, quasi-

experiment, treatment effect.

JEL classification codes: J08, J13, J22.

doi: 10.1111/asej.12246

*Kureishi (corresponding author): National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Hibiya

Kokusai Building 6th Floor, 2-2-3 Uchisaiwaicyo, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0011, Japan. Email: kureishi-

wataru@ipss.go.jp. McKenzie: Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan. Sakata:

Australian Institute of Family Studies, Southgate Towers, level 4/40 City Rd, Southbank VIC 3006, Australia.

Wakabayashi: Tohoku University, 27-1 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8576, Japan. The authors

would like to express our thanks to both an anonymous referee and the Editorial Board of the Asian

Economic Journal for their helpful and constructive comments that have led to significant improvement in the

paper. The authors would also like to thank Daiji Kawaguchi and participants of the 2016 Japanese Economic

Association Spring Meeting, the 10th Workshop on Empirical Moral Science, the 2019 Meeting of the

Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO), the 81st International Atlantic Economic Conference, the

Kansai Labor Workshop, the Tokyo Labor Economic Workshop and a seminar at Konan University for their

helpful comments and suggestions. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance provided by

the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant in Aid for Scientific Research (B) No. 15H03363 for

the project ‘The Impact of Child Birth and Child Care on the Employment of Women From the Perspective

of Gender Preference, Nursing Care and Family Relationships’(Project Leader: Colin McKenzie). Data used

in this paper comes from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Longitudinal Survey of

Newborns in the 21st Century (21 seiki shusshoji judan chosa) and the Live Birth Form of Vital Statistics

(Jinko dotai chosa shusseihyo). The fourth author wishes to acknowledge thefinancial assistance provided by

the Tohoku Kaihatsu Memorial Foundation and the Nomura Foundation.

The copyright line for this article was changed on 16 September 2021 afteroriginal online publication.

© 2021 The Authors. Asian Economic Journal published by East Asian Economic Association and

John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License,

which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and

is not used for commercial purposes.

Asian Economic Journal 2021, Vol.35 No. 3, 215–245 215

I. Introduction

An extension of parental leave is a contentious issue in Japan. Longer parental

leave is intended to encourage women to return to work given that their full-time

position is secured. Interestingly, many mothers in Japan do not take or do not

fully use up their parental leave entitlement (see Figure 1). If parental leave is

thought to be too short, why do many mothers not make full use of their cur rent

entitlements? This may be because an absence from work induced by parental

leave entitlements may, in fact, have some negative effects on mothers’careers.

Longer parental leave may depreciate mothers’human capital. The longer

mothers are out of the labor force, the less opportunity they have to develop

their skills and experiences, particularly through on-the-job training. In addition,

those married women who take longer parental leave may appear to their

employers as being apathetic towards their jobs. This signal to their employer, in

turn, may have negative effects on their career formation: for example,

impacting promotions and the types of tasks that they are assigned.

For Japan, Kato et al. (2013) estimate that the maternity penalty is up to a

20–30 percent decrea se in future ear nings. They show that this penalty can be

avoided by a mother returning to work from parental leave early and not reduc-

ing her working hours after returning. A mother’s early return to work may act

as a positive signal to her employer that she is committed to her job. The

employer, in return, may give promotions and interesting job tasks to those

mothers who show such job commitment, and this may encourage these women

to stay in full-time employment. In contrast, Waldfogel (1998) found that in the

USA, women who took advantage of the childcare leave system and returned to

Figure 1 Period of parental leave.

Source: Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century, wave 2001. n=2964.

Notes: The question explicitly instructed respondents to exclude maternity leave and short-ter m work. The sample

selection criteria are given in the notes of Table 1

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