Child Birth and Labor Market Position of Women on the Russian Labor Market

This study contributes to the development of the topic of the position of women in the Russian labor market after the birth of a child, taking into account the difference in wages and the length of the working day. Current published literature reveals significant wage differentials between mothers and non-mothers in different countries. However, the source of this wage gap is unclear. To monitor the reasons for the motherhood wage penalty and the difference in the length of the work hours of mothers in Russia, we use the data from the “Russian monitoring of the situation and population health” for the period of 2017-2019. This study consists of the following stages: justifying the selected covariates, performing a descriptive analysis of two groups of women with and without children, predicting the propensity score based on logit regression, and finally assessing the average treatment effect on the treated of having children on wages and hours worked. The results showed that women with children earn signeficantly less than women without children by 1.13 rubles per hour. However, an important finding was that having children has not a direct, but an indirect effect on hourly wages. For a woman's working hours, we found no significant effect of maternity status on the amount of time a woman invests in the labor market. Neither direct nor indirect relationship was confirmed Key words: wages, women’s position in the labor market, motherhood wage penalty, working hours, propensity score matching