Question

There are numerous empirical studies that provide evidence that the birth of children influences both a mother’s and father’s labor force participation. Use the theory of labor force participation of individuals to explain this relationship. Do you think that the birth of a child will have a positive or negative effect on the mother’s labor force participation? What about on the father’s labor force participation?

Answer 1

Birth of a child has some key roles to play in the labor force participation rate. When a child is born, it brings in more of responsibilities and future security in the minds of parents, thus effecting the labor participation in economic activity. This theory changes as per various factors like in case of urban area or in case of rural area, in case of poor family and in case of rich family. Suppose, a birth of a child in a poor family with push parents to work more and find a better job so as to secure the future of the child. It can be noted that after a child is born, the mother faces lots of physical changes and needs to look after the baby hence leading to either not enganing in any work during that term or doing part time work so as to balance out everything thereby reducing their participation in the labor force. However men tend to become more responsible as the bread earner of the family and engages himself into productive activity in order to run the house expenses. The same concept gets a bit more complicated at times where the mother still need to work because of being too poor to afford to take rest. At that time their participation in labor force remains same but that would not happen with majority. As per majority, child births makes mothers focus on household work and looking after the child leading to lower participation in productive work.