Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/196806 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12308
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer's perspective, in their fertile age they are also at "risk" of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a large-scale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate's personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-avis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.
Subjects: 
experimental economics
discrimination
fertility
JEL: 
C93
J16
J71
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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