Abstract
In Latin America, as in other developing regions, gender gaps in the labor market are still large. In this chapter we assess the role of motherhood in these gaps, bringing together new and existing evidence in an attempt to provide the most actual and comprehensive panorama for the region. New descriptive evidence comes from a novel database (GenLAC) that provides comparable data for 18 countries in Latin America regarding gender differences across many domains while also enabling intra-household comparisons. We document significant gender gaps in labor force participation (LFP), hours worked and wages, which remain about the same when considering women and men with similar characteristics. We also show that the presence of children in the household seems to explain a substantial portion of these gender gaps. This descriptive evidence is consistent with the results found by the very incipient literature addressing the causal effect of motherhood on labor market outcomes in the region. We provide a summary of this evidence which relies on event-study designs to obtain causal impacts of the birth of the first child on the labor market trajectories of parents. Results show that in Latin American countries effects are similar to those found for developed regions, although sizes differ. We next piece together the evidence regarding the main drivers behind motherhood effects in the region, namely: gender norms, childcare availability and family policies. Finally, we reunite the most recent evidence analyzing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on female labor market performance and conclude that this shock contributed to deepen the labor gender gaps through channels closely related to the disproportionate share of child care activities performed by women in Latin American households.
We are very grateful to José Alberto Molina for encouraging us to write this chapter, and also to an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, Cortes and Pan (2020) summarize much of this recent literature for developed countries and find that close to two thirds of the overall gender earnings gap can be accounted for by the differential impacts of children on women and men.
- 2.
The GenLAC database can be accessed at https://genlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar/home-en/.
- 3.
Unlike the figures presented in this chapter, most of the indicators available in the GenLAC database correspond to adults aged 25–64. See https://genlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar/home-en/.
- 4.
Also, Table 9.5 presents the results on labor force participation for each country. Results on the other labor market outcomes by country are available upon request.
- 5.
The gaps are measured as \((\frac {metric_{women}}{metric_{men}}-1)100\).
- 6.
Previous works had already studied the effect of family size or the second and third child on labor market outcomes of Latin American mothers. The effects found in that literature are usually small and can only be identified for the short run (Agüero & Marks, 2008, 2011; Cáceres-Delpiano, 2012; Cruces & Galiani, 2007).
- 7.
The national household surveys used are: the Longitudinal Social Protection Survey for Chile, the Module of Labor Trajectories of the Employment Survey for Mexico (MOTRAL), the National Household Survey for Peru (ENAHO), and the Longitudinal Social Protection Survey for Uruguay (LSPS-URY). In all cases the authors use the same econometric specification, sample selection criteria, and variable definitions, which together allows for comparing the motherhood effects across countries.
- 8.
Notice that part-time employment could not be analyzed in Mexico because the data to define this labor outcome is not available in that case.
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Berniell, I., Berniell, L., de la Mata, D., Edo, M., Marchionni, M., Pinto, M.F. (2022). Motherhood and Female Labor Market Outcomes in Latin America. In: Molina, J.A. (eds) Mothers in the Labor Market. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99780-9_9
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