The European Labour Force Surveys (Eurostat LFS) and the European Household Panel (ECHP), which since 2001 is progressively replaced with data collection under the EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) regulations, are the two major data sources used to compare men’s and women’s labour market participation and employment patterns in EU Member states. Both are based on sample surveys. Concerning the Eurostat LFS, the national employment surveys are based on individuals and are harmonised, for example by counting women in parental leave the same way in all countries (identical definitions). National employment surveys differ because, for example, in Sweden, women in parental leave are counted as active and in France as inactive. The EU-SILC’s sample surveys are not based on individuals but on household panels. Therefore, the EU-SILC is more limited with regard to the number of observed units in comparison to the Eurostat LFS. However, the EU-SILC contains more detailed information about each household’s behaviour and composition.
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Several studies show how the proportion of women in the European working population has been growing consistently since the 1970s (c.f. Thévenon, 2007; Vlasblom, 2004). Recent Eurostat LFS data for all 27 EU member states indicate that the average gender employment gap (population aged 15 to 64) fell from 18,9% in 1996 to 14,2% in 2007.34 This is mainly due to a rise in female employment rates. In 1996, in the 12 new member states, the employment gap, at 11,9%, was smaller than in the EU(15) (20,2%), but increased to 13,4% in 2007 whereas in the old member states the gap decreased to 14,5% in 2007. However, the evolution of the employment rates over the last decade in Eastern Europe has to be interpreted with care: In the 1990s in Eastern Europe, the female as well as the male employment rates fell strongly, mainly due to the transition to a market economy. They started to rise again due to an upturn in the economy when these States became EU members in 2004. The gender employment gap continued to be lowest in the Northern countries and highest in the Mediterranean countries in 2007.
Female unemployment rates tend to be underestimated because women with young children, especially married ones, who are not in paid employment may not declare themselves to be „unemployed“ even though they would like to work, (c.f. Jaumotte, 2003 for OECD countries). At the same time, women suffer from higher long-term unemployment rates than men. In 2007, on average in the EU (27), 3,3% of women were long-term unemployed as compared to 2,8% of men according to Eurostat LFS data using ILO definitions, but the differences in long-term unemployment rates between women and men vary widely across countries (up to 4,8 percentage points in Greece).
Based on Eurostat LFS data, de Hénau et al. (2004)35 emphasise that the employment gap between men and women in Europe is mainly due to motherhood, since it is mothers rather than fathers who are faced with a dichotomous choice between paid work and raising children. In analysing the impact of children on employment, de Hénau et al. (2007) focus on the labour market participation of men and women aged between 25 and 49 years, which is widely considered to be the age bracket when mothers devote most time to parenting.36
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The gender employment gap is the difference between the male and the female employment rate, whereas the employment rates are calculated by dividing the number of women (men) aged 15 to 64 in employment by the total female (male) population of the same age group. The employed population consists of those persons who during the reference week did any work for pay or profit for at least one hour, or were not working but had jobs from which they were temporarily absent.
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Results from the MOCHO EU Research Network 2004 (The rationale of Motherhood Choices: Influence of Employment Conditions and Public Policies). Scientific partners: Danièle Meulders, Jacques Le Cacheux, Siv Gustaffsson, Daniela Del Boca and Haris Symeonidou.
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Even though in some countries the age of mothers at first birth may be lower for some groups of women and men may become fathers at a later age. Moreover, some countries record very high teenage pregnancy rates. Furthermore, the age at which children leave home has been increasingly postponed and also, the burden of caring for older relatives befalls women
The data presented in table 22 in the appendix show that fathers in the 25 to 49 age group are more likely to be employed than men without children in all EU member states (European Labour Force Survey, 2006). By contrast, in all countries, mothers’ employment rates are lower than those of women without children (aged under 12). The average EU (27) employment gap between women without children and mothers is 13.6 percentage points.37 The gap is much smaller (below 5 percentage points) in Portugal, Romania and Lithuania, but it is particularly large (more than 20 percentage points) in Malta, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. The gap is also relatively large (between 15 and 20 points) in the UK, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Luxembourg and Austria. In these countries, employment rates are relatively high for women without children.
Mothers’ labour market participation is particularly high in Finland, where the dual earner model of families is widespread. It is also relatively high in Portugal, which is an exception in the countries of Southern European with respect to women’s labour market participation. One explanation may be that the low average wage level in Portugal obliges mothers to contribute to the household income (c.f. de Hénau et al., 2007). By contrast, the employment rate of mothers is far below the EU (27) average (62.4%) in the Mediterranean countries, since low female wages, insufficient childcare infrastructure, and persistently high unemployment may discourage mothers from working. However, persisting traditional role models (i.e. the male breadwinner family model) may also explain the relatively low labour market participation of mothers in Mediterranean countries.
The negative impact of children on female employment suggested by the Labour Force Survey is confirmed by several country-specific empirical studies: Pailhé and Solaz (2007), for example, find out that in France, 71% of women change their working situation after a first childbirth, 86% after a second childbirth and 91% after a third childbirth. (Enquête Famille et Employeurs INED/INSEE 2004-2005). Schippers and Vlasblom (2004) use estimation results of a female labour supply model to compute some decomposition analyses for six EU member states (data also based on the Labour Force Survey). They find out that large numbers of women leave the labour market when they have a first child, without indicating if and when they will return. To analyse the long term labour market behaviour of mothers in Europe, it is necessary to have time series data that allow to observe cohorts, but there are only a few countries that provide this kind of data, for example France (Enquête INED Histoires de Famille) or the Netherlands. Based on the Netherlands Family Survey for the years 1993-2003, Schippers and Vlasblom (2005) show that in the Netherlands the presence of children has costly consequences for mothers in terms of employment also in the long run.
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Women who leave employment after child birth are unlikely to rejoin the labour market within ten years even.
The impact of the number and age of children on mothers’ labour market participation has long been of interest to labour market analysts: de Henau et al. (2007), for example, find that, based on Eurostat LFS data (2005), the probability for mothers not to work increases with the number of children they have in all 27 EU member states. The difference between the employment rates of mothers and those of women without children is largest for mothers with three or more children in all countries. Using the wave 7 of the ECHP (EU (15), 2000), Chaupain-Guillot et al. (2008) show that the impact of the number of children on the labour market participation of mothers was the smallest in Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Greece. In Sweden, 75% of mothers with at least three children were in the labour force and more than 80% in Denmark, suggesting that the presence of young children did not prevent women from being economically active. In Spain and Greece, where overall employment rates for women were much lower, rates for mothers with three or more children were very similar to those of mothers with one or two children, that is to say relatively low. Drawing on a literature overview of the causal influence of children on mothers’ working activity in France, Moshion (2007) concludes that mothers with one or two children are often in employment, whereas mothers with at least three children tend to withdraw from the labour market. Méda et al. (2003) confirm a particularly strong negative impact of the third child on the mothers’ labour market participation in France, where only 16% of mothers with one child but over 40% of mothers with three children or more are not working (Enquête Emploi DARES/CREDOC 2002).
Using data from the Eurostat LFS for the years 1992 to 2005, Thévenon (2007) shows that the employment rates of mothers also vary with the age of the youngest child: in general in EU(27), the older the youngest child, the more likely it is that the mother will be in paid work. Thévenon (2007) further illustrates that in Eastern European countries, the UK and the Netherlands, mothers of children under 6 years tend to work less than those of older children. In these countries, most women take up work when the youngest child starts primary school at the age of six. This effect is most marked in Germany: Here, two out of three mothers whose youngest child is aged between 6 and 11 are employed, but less than one out of two mothers whose youngest child is aged between 3 and 5 is employed (c.f. Chaupain-Guillot et al., 2008). In France, the turning point for mothers’ employment is somewhat earlier, since most children from the age of three are enrolled in pre-schools (c.f. Jonsson and Letablier 2005). Schippers and Vlasblom (2004) show that the negative impact
of the youngest child’s age on the mothers’ employment is lowest in Mediterranean countries, due to the relative stability of family networks which provide informal childcare.
However, the major differences in employment rates between men and women as well as between mothers and women without children cannot be interpreted as a “pure” motherhood effect, since other factors such as educational differences may also play a role. Furthermore, mothers may not stop working completely but may reduce their hours worked by working part-time. Overall employment rates do not reflect the employment “penalty” in the form of work time reduction, since the rates include all employed persons irrespective of hours worked.