Vadim Ustyuzhanin is the laureate of the Student Research Paper Competition held by HSE University!

A researcher at the CSRA is the laureate the Student Research Paper Competition on economics. Vadim Ustyuzhanin's paper Parenthood Penalty in Russia: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size, assesses the causal effect of childbirth on maternal employment in Russia, often referred to as the ‘motherhood penalty’.

Using microdata from the 2002 and 2010 censuses and applying the instrumental variables method to address the problem of self-selection and reverse causality, Vadim Ustyuzhanin showed that, unlike the approximately 10% permanent penalty for motherhood observed in developed countries, in Russia there is a 15% drop in employment in the first year after childbirth. This effect then rapidly declines to 3-5% once children reach school age. In addition, he found that in Russia, the penalty for motherhood is higher for women without higher education, which contradicts the findings of previous studies conducted in developed countries. Finally, a ‘pause in the motherhood penalty’ was identified, where there is a sharp drop in employment immediately after birth, followed by a decline to zero when the child is between 3 and 11 years old, but after that age, a small negative effect reappears. Vadim Ustyuzhanin interprets this dynamic as rational behaviour on the part of Russian mothers: they first take advantage of three years of childcare leave, but then return to work due to a strong incentive to maintain their seniority and not lose their reserved position. This institutional context helps to reconcile the relatively small long-term effects with the large short-term decline in maternal employment found in the article.

Congratulations to Vadim Ustyuzhanin and Yevgeny Ivanov (the academis supervisor)!