Measuring the child penalty early in a career. The role of education for different cohorts

There is a large literature on the existence of a child penalty on labour incomes for mothers after the birth of a child, whereas there is little discernible effect on fathers'incomes. Some studies even find that fathers benefit from a premium. Using an event study approach, we measure the penalty due to the birth of a first child for cohorts of young adults after leaving the educational system in France. We measure the child penalty in terms of monthly earnings, the employment rate, working hours, hourly earnings, and other labour market outcomes. We assess the role plaid the level of education for different cohorts leaving fulltime education in 1998, 2004 and 2010. We find evidence of a significant child penalty for mothers: 22% in monthly earnings overall, rising to 37% for those with secondary education level. For the 2010 cohort, we observe the same level of absolute child penalties for mothers, whereas relatively to fathers, the penalty has narrowed. This is mainly due to a decrease in monthly earnings, and more precisely in employment rate of fathers before and after the birth of the child in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.