TY  - JOUR
AU  - Herr,Jane Leber
AU  - Wolfram,Catherine
TI  - Work Environment and “Opt-Out" Rates at Motherhood Across High-Education Career Paths
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14717
PY  - 2009
Y2  - February 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14717
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14717.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jane Herr
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
University of Chicago
1155 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
E-Mail: jlherr@uchicago.edu

Catherine Wolfram
Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA  94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-2588
Fax: 510/643-1420
E-Mail: wolfram@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - Using data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates and a sample of Harvard alumnae, we study the relationship between work environment and the labor force participation of mothers. We first document a large variation in labor force participation rates across high-education fields. Mindful of the possibility of systematic patterns in the types of women who complete different graduate degrees, we use the rich information available in each dataset, and the longitudinal nature of the Harvard data, to assess the extent to which these labor supply patterns may reflect variation in the difficulty of combining work with family. While it is difficult to entirely rule out systematic sorting, our evidence suggests that non-family-friendly work environments “push” women out of the labor force at motherhood. 
ER  -