Mother's Long-run Career Patterns after First Birth

Using Bayesian Markov chain clustering analysis we investigate career paths of Austrian women after their first birth. This data-driven method allows characterizing long-term career paths of mothers over up to 19 years by transitions between parental leave, non-employment and different foirms of employment. We classify women into five cluster-groups with very different long-term career trajectories after childbearing. We further group membership with a multinominal specification within the finite mixture model. This approach gives insights into the determinants of long-run outcomes. In particular, giving birt at an older age appears to be associated with very diverse outcomes: it is related to higher odds of dropping out of labor force, on the one hand, but also to higher odds of reaching a high-wage career track, on the other hand.