Fertility, Household Structure and Female Economic Activity - Evidence from the Women’s Health Study of Accra

In this paper, we use diary data from the Time-use and Health Study to investigate the role of reproductive choice on economic activity among women. While we find that the presence of young children does not affect economic activity in the formal labor market, we find large negative effects of young children on female economic activity in informal jobs. Our results suggest that women with infants are 54% less likely to pursue informal jobs, resulting in a reduction in the hours of gainful informal sector employment of 60%. Older children reduce the amount of time women have to spend on household tasks, but do not appear to have any impact on female labor participation