NO. 165. LABOR SUPPLY RESPONSES TO CONCEPTION AND CHILDBIRTH

Nicholaos Giannakopoulos, Athina Raftopoulou 2026.

Abstract

This paper studies the timing of the motherhood penalty using monthly panel data from the EU-SILC for Greece (2003–2024) and an event-study design that aligns women by both conception and childbirth. Exploiting within-woman variation, we document substantial labor supply adjustments that begin at conception, well before birth. Labor force participation and employment decline by around 8 percent following conception—nearly twice the magnitude of the post-birth reduction.

Dynamic estimates show that these adjustments emerge immediately after conception and persist throughout pregnancy, consistent with forward-looking behavior rather than responses driven solely by postnatal childcare demands.

The effects are highly heterogeneous: the largest penalties are concentrated among younger, less educated, lower-income, unmarried, and foreign-born women. Variation by employment type and sector further reveals that self-employed women and private-sector employees disengage earlier and more sharply than their public-sector counterparts. Taken together, the results suggest that motherhood-related labor market penalties in Greece are both substantial and front-loaded, beginning during pregnancy rather than at birth.

 

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