Female employment patterns around first childbirth in Austria

"This paper investigates the labor market behavior of women in Austria around their first childbirth. By analyzing Austrian FFS data of women who gave birth to their first child from 1960 to 1993 respectively 1996 and using logistic regression, the odds of interrupting employment and the odds of (re-)entering the labor market within three years are examined. Family policy and especially parental leave mandates are supposed to highly influence women’s employment behavior. Therefore, besides human capital and socio-demographic variables, the effect of parental leave eligibility and the potential leave duration are of special interest regarding the reentry decision. As will be shown below, mothers entitled to paid parental leave are more likely to interrupt employment, and the extension of leave duration over past decades has increased the odds of being employed three years after childbirth."[author´s abstract