IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17793.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Menopause “Penalty”

Author

Listed:
  • Conti, Gabriella

    (University College London)

  • Ginja, Rita

    (University of Bergen)

  • Persson, Petra

    (Stanford University)

  • Willage, Barton

    (University of Delaware)

Abstract

The motherhood penalty is well-documented, but what happens at the other end of the reproductive spectrum? Menopause—a transition often marked by debilitating physical and psychological symptoms—also entails substantial costs. Using population-wide Norwegian and Swedish data and quasi-experimental methods, we show that a menopause diagnosis leads to lasting drops in earnings and employment, alongside greater reliance on social transfers. The impact is especially severe for women with lower socioeconomic status. Increasing access to menopause-related health care can help offset these losses. Our findings reveal the hidden economic toll of menopause and the potential gains from better support policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Conti, Gabriella & Ginja, Rita & Persson, Petra & Willage, Barton, 2025. "The Menopause “Penalty”," IZA Discussion Papers 17793, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17793
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17793.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    menopause; health care; disability income; fertility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17793. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.