On the determinants of career interruption by childbirth among married women in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to investigate determinants of job continuity across childbirth for married women in Japan. We use data from the Statisti cal Bureau's 1992 Employment Status Survey on nearly 8000 married women who were employed right before childbirth. Our estimation and simulation resul ts suggest that education and access to child care are important determinan ts for a married woman to continue her work across childbirth, while high w ages and short working hours help her to continue to work but are less impo rtant determinants. Also, the estimation result suggests that diversified w orking environments across industries and firm sizes possibly influence wom en's decisions. J. Japan, Int. Econ., March 1999, 13(1), pp. 73-89, Tokyo M etropolitan University, Department of Economics, Hachioji, Tokyo 192-03, Ja pan; and University of Tsukuba, Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan. (C) 1999 Academic Press.