ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the construction of comparative ‘fertility and work’ files from household panel data sets for the purpose of analysing women’s labour force transitions in connection with childbirth. It explores the contents of each national household panel data set and discusses its advantages and limits for our research purposes. The chapter deals with the identification of birth events in a woman’s life and the construction of women’s labour market events around childbirth. It explains finding in the data sets the husbands or cohabiting men with whom the selected mother is living at the time of giving birth to children. The chapter discusses the use of labour market histories around births and the measurement of earnings around the time of having children. The chapter shows the cross country comparability of educational level and gives details on the construction of a variable on work experience of women and their spouses at the time of having children.
