TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Ayllón, Sara
AU  - Kirkpatrick, Linda
AU  - Plum, Alexander T.
        TI  - Child Penalties and Marriage Dissolution
        PY  - 2025/Jan/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17658
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17658
        AB  - This paper investigates how a change in marital status can influence labour market-related child penalties, by comparing married couples and those whose marriage is dissolved after the birth of their first child. We take advantage of the rich administrative data from New Zealand and show that child penalties vary greatly by civil status: whereas the employment penalty for married mothers is 32%, for mothers who get divorced within seven years of giving birth, it is about 5% and indistinguishable from that facing fathers. The same is true of earnings, indicating that divorced mothers have a much stronger attachment to the labour market than do married mothers. Our section on mechanisms points to differences in economic need as the driver behind the discrepancy in child penalties by marital status.
        KW  - child penalty
KW  - labour market
KW  - marital dissolution
KW  - event-study estimates
KW  - New Zealand
        ER  -