Is Two Too Many? Parity and Mothers' Labor Force Exit

How do women's chances of labor force exit vary by the number of children they have?

Conventional wisdom suggests there may be a tipping point at the second child when women are particularly likely to leave. Women who only ever have one child, by contrast, are thought to be uniquely unlikely to exit.

Using data from the nationally representative 1979-2012 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/nlsy79), event history methods estimate the likelihood of labor force exit as women progress across parity transitions.

Results show no evidence for a tipping point around the birth of second children. Women are instead most likely to leave the labor force when they are pregnant with their first child and each subsequent child is associated with a smaller increase in the probability of exit. In addition, women who only ever have one child are less likely to leave the labor force than those who have more children and these differences arise as early as their pregnancies with their first children. College-educated women who only ever have one child are especially unlikely to exit.

Findings thus do not support the second child tipping point hypothesis, but they emphasize the importance of completed parity and the transition to motherhood for mothers' labor force behavior.