TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Britto, Diogo
AU  - Holanda, Caio De
AU  - Ferman, Bruno
AU  - Fonseca, Alexandre
AU  - Sampaio, Breno
AU  - Warwar, Lucas
        TI  - Parenthood and Productivity
        PY  - 2026/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18658
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18658
        AB  - Does parenthood impair workers’ on-the-job productivity? We study this question and its implications for understanding the child penalties in employment observed for mothers. We focus on judges, a profession that helps overcome key empirical challenges: output can be measured precisely, it can be observed for all workers before and after childbirth because virtually no parent leaves the profession, and workloads are evenly distributed, limiting scope for selective task allocation. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find no evidence that mothers’ -- and fathers’ -- output declines during pregnancy or after they return from parental leave, and we can rule out moderate declines. We validate this result using a broad set of measures capturing both the quantity and quality of judicial work, and we document similar patterns for self-employed labor lawyers. Our findings show that motherhood need not reduce on-the-job productivity and suggest that, at least in some contexts, child penalties in employment may not be driven by lasting declines in on-the-job productivity.
        KW  - child penalty
KW  - productivity
KW  - gender gap
        ER  -