Understanding Women's Wage Growth using Indirect Inference with Importance Sampling

The goal of this work is to investigate the effects of time out of the labor market for childcare on women's lifecycle wage growth. We develop a dynamic lifecycle model of human capital, fertility, and labor supply for women. We estimate by indirect inference using importance sampling and formalize the use of this procedure. The results indicate a modest effect of fertility-induced non-employment spells on human capital accumulation. The difference in human capital among prime age women would be approximately 2.4% higher at its peak if the relationship between fertility and working were eliminated, and 4.7% higher if the relationship between marriage and fertility was also eliminated.