Female Employment and Timing of Births Decisions : A Multiple State Transition Model

In this paper we estimate a multiple state transition model, describing transitions into maternity and labor market transitions for women. Each state is characterized by two components: the labor market state and the maternity state. This enables us to investigate to disentangle the effects of socio-economic variables on the timing of births and on labor market transitions. We find that the transition intensities into maternity are significantly higher for non-employed women than for employed women, and transition intensities into employment are significantly higher for women with no children than for women with children. Lower educated non-employed women have a higher transition probability into maternity and lower transition probability into employment than higher educated non-employed women