Our paper is the first to estimate the effects of early menopause and menopause symptoms, variously defined, on women’s employment and full-time employment rates relative to women who do australia rcs data not go through early menopause and those who do not suffer menopausal symptoms.
We exploit prospective birth cohort data for all women born in a particular week in 1958 to estimate the causal effects of menopause on employment rates using a difference-in-difference strategy.
This technique compares the gap in employment rates during their 20s and early 30s with the employment gap in their 50s for women who went onto experience early menopause versus those who did not. We make similar comparisons between women according to the intensity with which they experienced menopausal symptoms when aged 50. In doing so we control for a rich array of variables collected at birth, in childhood, and in early adulthood which can affect employment prospects and experiences of menopause.