Employment Outcomes After a Birth of a Child with a Developmental Disability: A National Nested Case-Control Study

Using records from the National Insurance Institute of Israel, we recognized all children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD, N = 8072) or hearing loss (HL, N = 2231) born in Israel between 2005 and 2010. Typical developed children were taken from a random 20% sample of children born during the same years (N = 227,492). Analyses were adjusted for year of birth, population group, parental ages, parental education, child birth order and peripherality. Working women, who gave birth to children with either ASD or HL, were at increased risk of not maintaining their working status over the 5 years after birth. There is a decreased ratio between household wage after and before birth, in families with children with either ASD or HL.

Automated summary

The study found that in Israel, mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders or hearing loss were more likely to stop working in the 5 years after their child's birth, and the household wage decreased after the child was born.