Human capital, family structure and resources, role conflict, child care characteristics and mother's employment: A longitudinal analysis

• Main Author: Habasevich-Brooks, Tara Colleen
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2008
• Subjects: Individual & family studies; Labor relations
• ISBN: 1124458832; 9781124458830

When reentering the labor force after the birth of a child, a mother has to decide how many hours to work and whether to change those hours over time. Mothers have four main factors to consider: family structure and resources, child care characteristics, human capital, and role conflict. Previous research has examined each of these factors separately, but research combining multiple factors into a single analysis is rare. In addition, the majority of previous studies are cross-sectional with no examination of change over time. This research expands on previous research to establish a more holistic model of the factors that affect mothers’ change in employment hours over time. This study uses data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care (SECC), which is a unique longitudinal data set that includes measures of each of the previous four factors mentioned above. This study focused on mother’s hours of employment treated as a lagged dependent variable as well as a change score. Results from the linear regression analyses indicate that variables in each set of factors predict both hours of employment (lagged) and hours of employment (change score). Overall the human capital variables made a significant increase in the R-squared value of both analyses, while the complete model of hours employment (lagged) and the role conflict model for hours of employment (change score) were the only other models that significantly improved upon the control model. Methodological implications of measuring change in these two ways is covered in the discussion section.