EARLY RETURNS TO WORK LINKED TO POORER CHILD HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES

Do mothers who return to work early harm their children's health and development? Evidence from a new study of mothers and children in the United States suggests that the answer may well be yes.

The research by Professor Jane Waldfogel and colleagues, published in the February 2005 issue of the Economic Journal, finds that:

• Nearly two-thirds (63%) of women who work pre-birth return to work within twelve weeks of giving birth, with over half that group (37% of women working pre-birth) returning full-time.

• Compared with children whose mothers were still at home at twelve weeks, children whose mothers returned to work within twelve weeks fared worse on a number of health and development outcomes:

• Children whose mothers return to work early are less likely to receive regular medical checkups and breastfeeding in the first year of life, and are also less likely to have all of their immunisations against polio and DPT (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus) in approximately the first eighteen months of life.

• These effects are stronger when mothers return to work full-time within the first twelve weeks.

• Furthermore, children whose mothers return full-time within twelve weeks are more likely to have behaviour problems at the age of four.

Maternity leave is on the policy agenda in many OECD countries. Canada recently extended its period of paid maternity leave to one year. And in his December 2004 pre-budget report, Chancellor Gordon Brown pledged that the UK will eventually do the same. The latest UK announcements plan to extend paid leave from six to nine months.

The average OECD country now provides over a year of job-protected and paid maternity leave to new mothers. But some countries fall well below the average.

The United States stands out by having no national policy providing paid maternity leave – just the Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides twelve weeks of unpaid leave to the roughly 50% of the workforce it covers. In the absence of a paid maternity leave policy, and with unpaid leave limited to twelve weeks and not available to all new mothers, many women return to work within the first twelve weeks post-birth.

This study analyses data on 1,900 children born between 1988 and 1996 to women who are part of the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative sample of young women followed since 1979. The authors use a range of econometric techniques to address the possibility that children whose mothers returned early might have had different outcomes for other reasons.

The evidence from these estimates suggests causal relationships between early returns to work, particularly when those are full-time, and differences in breastfeeding, regular medical check-ups, immunisations, and behaviour problems.

These findings raise a ‘red flag' concerning policies that unnecessarily hasten women's return to work after giving birth. According to Jane Waldfogel:

‘Our findings suggest that US policy-makers should reconsider the wisdom of welfare policies that require women to return to work within three months of giving birth, and should explore options to extend parental leave coverage to cover more new parents, provide some mechanism for paid leave, and grant a longer period of leave.'

ENDS

Notes for editors: ‘Maternity Leave, Early Maternal Employment and Child Health and Development in the US' by Lawrence Berger, Jennifer Hill and Jane Waldfogel is published in the February 2005 issue of the Economic Journal.

Berger is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Hill and Waldfogel are at Columbia University, where Waldfogel is Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.

For further information: contact Jane Waldfogel on +1-212-851-2408 (email: jw205@columbia.edu); or RES Media Consultant Romesh Vaitilingam on 0117-983-9770 or 07768-661095 (email: romesh@compuserve.com).