The existence of large child penalties has been documented for multiple countries and time periods. In this paper, we assess to what extent marriage decisions and pregnancies (rather than live births), which tend to occur around the birth of the first child, explain part of the so-called...

In this paper we assess whether changes in labor market decisions upon motherhood lead to potential inefficient allocations of talent. Using an event study approach with retrospective data drawn from SHARE for 29 European countries we show that motherhood effects go beyond the well studied...

The existence of large child penalties on women’s labor market outcomes has been documented for multiple countries and time periods. In this paper, we assess to what extent marriage decisions and pregnancies may explain partly these child penalties. Using data for 29 countries drawn from...