We design a new survey to elicit quantifiable, interpersonally comparable beliefs about
pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits and costs to maternal labor supply decisions, to
study how beliefs vary across and within different groups in the population and to analyze
how those beliefs relate to choices. In terms of pecuniary returns, mothers’ (and fathers’)
later-life earnings are perceived to increase the more hours the mother works while her
child is young. Similarly, respondents perceive higher non-pecuniary returns to children’s
cognitive and non-cognitive skills the more hours a mother works and the more time her
child spends in childcare. Family outcomes on the other hand, such as the quality of the
mother-child relationship and child satisfaction, are perceived to be the highest when the
mother works part-time, which is also the option most respondents believe their friends
and family would like them to choose. There is a large heterogeneity in the perceived
availability of full-time childcare and relaxing constraints could substantially increase
maternal labor supply. Importantly, it is perceptions about the non-pecuniary returns to
maternal labor supply as well as beliefs about the opinions of friends and family that are
found to be strong predictors of maternal labor supply decisions, while beliefs about labor
market returns are not.
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