출산전후휴가제도와 육아휴직제도가 여성 근로자의 경력단절에 미치는 영향

Childbirth and parenting are key factors for career interruption of female workers. Recent social policies have sought to increase female employment through various care policies. Among these policies, maternity leave and parental leave have been two key policies. However, existing studies on these policies tend to focus on the determinants of their introduction at a firm or country level, whereas few studies examined the effects of the policies on career interruption of female employees. Among a few studies on the effects of these polices, the results are not consistent: some argue they reduce career interruption, while others argue they increase it. In the present study, we examined the effects of maternity and parental leave on career interruption of female employees in Korea by a panel data of female workers between 2007 and 2016. We also compared the effects of these policies across female workers with varying level of wages. The key findings are, first, two programs reduced career interruption, controlling for other factors. Second, the effects of these programs increased as the level of wages increased. In short, women with higher wages benefit more from maternity and parental leave programs than those with lower wages. The findings suggest that it is important to put pressure on firms to offer these programs to their employees, since a large number of female employees report that they do not have these programs in their organizations. The results also show that there can be important differences within female workers, and the findings demonstrate that an important direction for maternity and parental leave policies is to deal with the problems of female works with lower level of wages to maintain career.