The Role of Children in Women's Job Choice

Women’s occupation choice has been incompletely modeled in the past, but this paper brings together several methods to seek a more complex understanding of the decision process. I employ panel data spanning three decades (1979 to 2012) and six thousand women in the United States to investigate the impact of childbirth on the mother’s decision between occupations. I use a multinomial logit model estimated through Stata’s generalized structural equation modeling software and incorporate expected potential incomes through multiple imputation. Instrument variables for childbirth expectations are employed to address endogeneity. Issues of endogeneity ultimately turn out to be troublesome to correct for, but estimates from several models indicate that women with children are less likely to work as managers and more likely to choose occupations such as education or simply to remain at home.Bachelor of Scienc