WOMENS LABOR-FORCE TRANSITIONS IN CONNECTION WITH CHILDBIRTH - A PANEL-DATA COMPARISON BETWEEN GERMANY, SWEDEN AND GREAT-BRITAIN

In this paper we make use of the panel aspects of the German GSOEP, th e Swedish HUS and the British BHPS data. In these data sets we known m onth and year of childbirth and the month to month labor force status of the mother also before giving birth. This permits analysis of labor force transitions triggered by child births of different birth orders . From macro data Swedish women are known to have the highest labor fo rce participation. The difference in total labor force participation o f women is totally a result of fewer mothers entering the labor force and entering later in Germany and Great Britain than in Sweden. This p aper shows that before birth of first child there is no such differenc e. We find that German and British women have even higher full-time la bor force participation than Swedish women 12 months before the birth of the first child. The difference is more pronounced for second and t hird births than for first births. We suggest that these differences a re caused by different family policy regimes where Germany can be char acterized as a breadwinner regime and Sweden a regime oriented towards equal role sharing of father and mother. Our results on determinants of being in the labor force both after and before the birth of a child as well as determinants of the tempo of entering the labor force afte r birth shows that women's own human capital is important both in Germ any and Great Britain, whereas in Sweden also less educated women have entered the labor force by the time the child is 2 years old.