Child Disability, Children’s Time with Mother and Maternal Employment

Empirical estimates of the effect of child disability on maternal employment vary considerably as the disability definitions are changed. Literature is also constrained by the limited availability of information about presence and severity of health conditions of children. Hence, researchers construct disability index based on the parent-reported health status of the child. In this paper, we construct a Disability definition based on the framework provided by ICF-CY(2007). Disability definition was constructed using the presence of a physician-diagnosed health condition reported by the parents. Powers (2003) who argued that parent’s report of the health limitation of the child may be jointly determined by the labor market outcomes of the parents. However, when parents are asked to report any diagnosis of specific health condition, the report can be assumed to be objective. In the absence of administrative record of the diagnosis of child health, this measure is the closest proxy. We find that child disability variables do not affect the labor force participation of the single mothers or married mothers. However, married mothers’ with lower educational attainment increase their weekly work hours despite the presence of a child with either impairment or activity limitation. Weekly labor supply of the married mothers with a greater level of education is not perturbed by the presence of a disabled child.