Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
4-19-2021
Abstract
As many as 20% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage - a random event that any expecting woman is susceptible to, yet the economic effects of this prevalent fertility shock have not been directly studied. In this paper, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and address a critical empirical question: how do miscarriages affect women's labor market outcomes, such as income and labor supply? We find that a miscarriage is associated with about $2,500 loss in annual income post-loss. Our findings suggest the negative effect on female labor market outcomes associated with a pregnancy loss outweighs any positive effect of delaying childbirth.
Keywords
fertility, pregnancy loss, miscarriage, income
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Kalsi, Priti and Liu, Maggie Y., "Pregnancy Loss and Female Labor Market Outcomes" (2021). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/57
Comments
Author’s submitted manuscript.