How earnings and public transfers shape the educational gradient in partnered mothers’ poverty trajectories in Austria

The transition to parenthood is a major source of gender inequality in economic vulnerability. This paper examines how mothers’ own earnings, public transfers, and partners’ income jointly shape poverty risks after first birth and how the importance of different sources of income varies by education. Using Austrian administrative register data covering more than 34,000 first-time mothers and their partners, we follow couples from two years before to six years after childbirth using an event-study design. We compare individual and household poverty measures and decompose disposable income into earnings and public transfers to assess the role of public and private resources.We find that although mothers experience substantial and persistent earnings losses after childbirth, increases in economic vulnerability are considerably smaller at the household than at the individual level and are partly cushioned by public transfers, reflecting protection through partners’ earnings and public transfers, especially family-related ones. Educational differences are pronounced: higher-educated mothers experience larger earnings losses but remain comparatively protected, both through higher partner earnings and more effective public transfers, whereas lower-educated mothers face substantially higher and more persistent poverty risks despite smaller earnings losses. Our findings show that the economic consequences of childbirth cannot be inferred from earnings losses alone and highlight the importance of both public and private resources in shaping inequality after parenthood.