Work Environment and “Opt-Out” Rates atMotherhood Across High-Education Career Paths∗Jane Leber Herr†Catherine Wolfram‡September 2010AbstractWe study the relationship between work environment and mothers’ labor force par-ticipation. Using data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates and asample of Harvard alumnae, we find large variation in mothers’ labor force attachmentacross high-education fields. Mindful of possible selection across graduate degrees,we use the rich information available in each dataset, and the longitudinal nature ofthe Harvard data, to assess the extent to which these patterns may reflect variationin the difficulty of combining work with family. While it is difficult to rule out selec-tion entirely, our evidence suggests that non-family-friendly work environments “push”women out of the labor force at motherhood.∗We would like to thank Marianne Bertrand, Dan Black, David Card, Constan¸ca Esteves-Sorenson, Claudia Goldin, Jason Grissom, Robert LaLonde, Ioana Marinescu, Annalisa Mas-tri, Emily Oster, Rebecca Ryan, Lucie Schmidt, Jesse Shapiro, and seminar participants atthe University of Chicago, U.C. Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,and the University of Michigan for their comments and suggestions. We would also liketo thank Joshua Langenthal, Marci Glazer, Charles Jones, and Zachary Leber for the useof their Harvard anniversary reports, Jessica Chen, Margaret Gough, Cathy Hwang, OmarJabri, Tatyana Shmygol and Jenny Zhuo for providing excellent research assistance, andPeter Jacobs for providing our estimated salaries.†The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL60637, [email protected].‡Haas School of Business, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1900 and NBER, [email protected] IntroductionOne of the most profound social changes of the 20th century has been the dramatic increase inthe number of women in the labor force. Recent statistics, however, suggest that the increasein female labor force participation began to level off in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Mosisaand Hippie, 2006). This has led to sp eculation about whether the “natural” rate of femalelabor force participation has been reached (Goldin, 2006), whether this is instead a temporaryslow-down driven by economic conditions (Boushey, 2005; Joint Economic Committee, 2008),or whether there are remaining policy, cultural, or social changes that would accommodatemore women in the workforce (Drago and Hyatt, 2003).Within the broader trends, much of the media discussion has focused on highly educatedwomen leaving the labor force at motherhood. Most visibly this includes two cover articles,the “Opt-Out Revolution” in the New York Times magazine (Belkin, 2003) and “The Case forStaying Home” in Time Magazine (Wallis, 2004).1In this paper we begin by documenting,however, that labor force participation rates of highly educated mothers vary markedly acrossprofessions. For example, among women with young children, the 2003 National Survey ofCollege Graduates (NSCG) shows that 94 percent of MDs work, compared to only 75 percentof MBAs. Likewise, among Harvard graduates of the same cohort, 94 percent of MD motherswork, compared to only 72 percent of MBAs.2We next ask whether these patterns suggest that there are elements of the work envi-ronment – perhaps mutable with different policies or social norms – that drive mothers outof the labor force. If so, does variation in “family friendliness” across high-education profes-1As we note in Section 4, we find much higher employment rates among mothers with graduate degreesthan among those with only a BA, calling into question the idea that highly educated mothers are especiallylikely to “opt out” (see also Goldin, 2006.)2Goldin and Katz (2008) report preliminary results from a large data collection effort on several cohortsof Harvard and Radcliffe graduates (the “Harvard and Beyond” study sample). Their study depicts broadtrends in various schooling, family, and work choices made by men and women graduating around 1970,1980, and 1990. In recent work Goldin and Katz use this data to explore the question of variation in laborforce participation rates among highly educated women (John R. Commons Award Lecture, ASSA, January,3, 2010). Our analysis relies on a different data source, although our sample overlaps with their 1990 cohort.See Section 4 and Appendix B for a more detailed discussion of our data.1sions help explain the large differences in labor force participation among mothers? Our aimis to assess whether work environment influences women’s work decisions after motherhood,while mindful of the inherent differences in the set of women who pursue a given career path.There is a vast literature on the factors that influence married women’s labor supply (forrecent examples see Goldin, 2006, and Blau and Kahn, 2007). Similar to this study, a subsetof this literature has begun to focus on variables that elaborate on the traditional economicmodel by analyzing such factors as gender role attitudes (Fortin, 2005), social learning (Fogliand Veldkamp, 2008), and inter-generational preference transmission (Fernandez and Fogli,2009). Our description of the potential influence of work environment, which assumes aminimum hours requirement that may vary across fields, lies outside the traditional modelby placing this constraint on the labor supply decision.One benefit of considering this question among highly educated women is that graduatedegree is observable, and provides a clear delineation across which we expect systematicvariation in work environment. Furthermore, highly educated women may be more sensitiveto a given level of family friendliness. Although work environment may affect all women’sutility, because these women are more likely to be married to high-earning men, they mayhave a greater capacity to respond by exiting the labor force.3By using this set of women,we are therefore focusing on the “canaries in the coal mine”, and can thus detect the effectsof work environment when using a relatively blunt measure such as labor force participation.At the same time, we might expect educated women to work in positions with greaterbenefits and professional standing, suggesting that they should have a greater capacity toadjust their work environment in response to motherhood (Tomlinson,