A1901
Title: Children's health shocks and maternal job separation: Evidence from Japan
Authors: Tomoe Naito - Seikei University (Japan) [presenting]
Abstract: The aim is to investigate how children's health status affects mothers' labor supply using individual-level data from the Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century in Japan. A lagged fixed effects model is employed to capture the dynamic effects of outpatient visits and hospitalizations on maternal employment. The results indicate that when children's outpatient visits or hospitalizations persist for more than two years, mothers' probability of job separation decreases by about 1.5 percentage points on average. However, these effects vary by the child's gender and age, as well as by household income. In lower-income households, the negative effects of hospitalization weaken, lose statistical significance, and even become positive. Among households earning below 2 million yen, which is often below the relative poverty line in Japan, prior hospitalization increases the probability of maternal job separation by about 9 percentage points. These findings suggest that, for the overall sample including high-income households, children's health shocks reduce the likelihood of maternal job separation. In contrast, among low-income households, such health shocks may increase the probability of maternal job separation, likely reflecting reservation wage. While work-family conflict reduces job separation, it does not alter the impact of children's health on employment outcomes.
