Recent research has suggested that the characteristics of paid work affect trade-offs between women's activities in the family and employment spheres. One argument suggests that public sector employment, more so than private sector employment, provides conditions that are amenable to the combination of paid work and family. In this article, the authors exploit panel-type data to compare the labor market behavior of Jewish Israeli women in the years following childbirth and focus on differential labor market activity among women with employment histories in the public and private sectors. Their findings point to significant interaction effects between previous sector of employment and childbearing behavior and suggest that the welfare state, through the provision of "family friendly" employment opportunities, plays a role in encouraging women's paid labor in the years following childbirth.

We examine demographic behaviour of Jewish adults of mixed ethnic ancestry, relative to those of the two major Jewish ethnic groups in Israel. Research has shown that for measures of socioeconomic status, such as educational attainment, outcomes for multi-ethnics are in between Á and very close to the middle of Á those associated with the two major ethnic groups. We find that, in contrast, the marriage and fertility behaviour of multi-ethnic adults is nearly identical to that of the more socially advantaged ethnic group and quite distinct from that of the less advantaged ethnic group. Through multivariate analyses, we explore factors associated with families of origin, including socioeconomic status and cultural indicators of family norms, which are associated with these patterns. We discuss interpretations of our findings.

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