MOTHERHOOD: THE IMPACT ON WOMEN’S HOURS OF WORK

Before the arrival of children, more than four out of five (85%) working women in Britain are in full-time employment, working more than 30 hours a week. But once they become mothers, the proportion is much lower: only a third (34%) of working mothers with pre-school children are employed full-time, and only 41% of working mothers with a youngest child of school age.

These are among the findings of new research by Dr Gillian Paull, published in the February 2008 issue of The Economic Journal. In contrast, the study finds that the proportion of men working full-time is slightly greater for those with children: 91% of working men are employed full-time prior to children, while 96% of working fathers with a pre-school child and 97% of working fathers with a youngest child of school age are employed full-time.

Dr Paull analyses data from approximately 84,000 interviews with 18,000 men and women from the first 14 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, a nationally representative sample of 5,500 households interviewed every year since 1991. Her research shows that:

• Despite policy innovations and cultural changes that have led to substantial changes in women’s role in the labour market in Britain, working women are still much more likely than men to be working part-time – 30 hours or fewer each week – rather than full-time – 31 or more hours a week.


• The birth of the first child is the single most important event moving women to part-time work. Just prior to the first birth, over 90% of working women spend 31 or more hours a week at work. A year after the first birth, only 40% are in full-time employment.


• There is no marked return to working full-time for mothers as their first child gets older. Indeed, the movement towards shorter hours continues throughout the decade following the first birth with the proportion of working mothers employed full-time declining to just over 30%.


• Women who return to work when their youngest child starts compulsory schooling at age four or five are relatively more likely than those returning at other times to take up part-time work rather than full-time work.


• The impact of children on women’s work hours persists even after the children have grown up and left home. Only 58% of working women who no longer have dependent children living at home are employed full-time, compared to 96% of their male counterparts.


• Although children have little impact on men’s work hours, there is some adjustment in the balance of work hours within couples following births and when the youngest child starts compulsory schooling. Average work hours for men tend to adjust in the opposite direction to their female partner’s hours at these times, while the hours tend to move in the same direction during other periods.

The link between women’s work hours and family formation and development is highly pertinent to the debate on the desirability of the part-time work for women and whether policy measures should encourage women to work longer hours.

Condemnation for the prevalence of shorter hours is often expressed in the “part-time pay penalty” and the notion that part-time work consists of dead-end jobs in poorly paid occupations, perpetuates the weaker position of women in employment positions.

On the other hand, it has been argued that part-time work is an optimal response to the constraints faced by women, with flexibility in hours and pay allowing women to participate in formal paid work on the conditions that
they want.

ENDS

Notes for editors: ‘Children and Women’s Hours of Work’ by Gillian Paull is published in the February 2008 issue of The Economic Journal.

Gillian Paull is a research associate of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

For further information: contact Gillian Paull on 020-8241-2895 (email: gill_p@ifs.org.uk); or Romesh Vaitilingam on 07768-661095 (email: romesh@compuserve.com).