This paper provides representative evidence on the perceived returns to maternal labor supply. We design a novel survey to elicit subjective expectations, and show that a mother’s decision to work is perceived to have sizable impacts on child skills, family outcomes, and the future labor market outcomes of the mother. Examining the channels through which the impacts are perceived to operate, we document that beliefs about the impact of additional household income can account for some, but not all, of the perceived positive effects.

This article investigates stable and efficient networks in the context of risk sharing, when it is costly to establish and maintain relationships that facilitate risk sharing. We find a novel trade-off between efficiency and equality: the most stable efficient networks also generate the most inequality. We then suppose that individuals can be split into groups, assuming that incomes across groups are less correlated than within a group but relationships across groups are more costly to form. The tension between efficiency and equality extends to these correlated income structures.

We design a new survey to elicit quantifiable, interpersonally comparable beliefs about pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits and costs to maternal labor supply decisions, to study how beliefs vary across and within different groups in the population and to analyze how those beliefs relate to choices. In terms of pecuniary returns, mothers’ (and fathers’) later-life earnings are perceived to increase the more hours the mother works while her child is young.