This paper uses microdata from the 1992 Statistics Canada Family Expenditure Survey to provide evidence that male and female incomes do not always exert identical influences on household expenditures. The novelty of the paper lies in its demonstration that, while incomes may be pooled for some categories of consumption (e.g. housing), the income pooling hypothesis must be rejected for others. We also go beyond simply rejecting the pooling hypothesis to ask how male versus female income is used. Our results stress the on‐going importance of traditional gender roles. For example, we find that expenditures on child care increase only with women’s incomes_higher male income is not associated with higher expenditure on child care even when both spouses are full‐time, full‐year paid workers.

We would like to acknowledge Lori Timmins for her outstanding research assistance on this project. We would also like to thank Jerome Adda, Joseph Altonji, Marianne Bertrand, Russell Cooper, David Card, Steve Durlauf, Christian Dustmann, Andrea Ichino, Claudia Goldin, Larry Katz, John Kennan, Magne Mogstad, Mario Small, Uta Schonberg, Chris Taber, Thomas Lemieux, Glen Waddell, Ian Walker, Basif Zafar, and seminar participants at Bocconi University, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, European University Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University, Norwegian School of Business and Economics, Paris I, Sciences Po, University College London, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale University, the CEA 2011, the CIFAR SIIWB Workshop, the NBER Summer Institute 2013, and SOLE 2012 for helpful comments on this and earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank ICPSR and MTF for allowing us to use the data, and the usual disclaimer applies. The authors are grateful for CIFAR's financial support. Fortin also acknowledges funding from SSHRC Grants #410-2011-0567. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.© 2013 by Nicole M. Fortin, Philip Oreopoulos, and Shelley Phipps. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. ABSTRACTUsing three decades of data from the "Monitoring the Future" cross-sectional surveys, this paper shows that, from the 1980s to the 2000s, the mode of girls' high school GPA distribution has shifted from "B" to "A", essentially "leaving boys behind" as the mode of boys' GPA distribution stayed at "B". In a reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, we find that gender differences in post-secondary expectations, controlling for school ability, and as early as 8th grade are the most important factor accounting for this trend. Increases in the growing proportion of girls who aim for a post-graduate degree are sufficient to account for the increase over time in the proportion of girls earning "A's". The larger relative share of boys obtaining "C" and C+" can be accounted for by a higher frequency of school misbehavior and a higher proportion of boys aiming for a two-year college degree. IntroductionWomen now far outnumber men among recent college graduates in most industrialized countries (OECD, 2008). As Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) The first goal of this paper is to document changes in gender disparities in the academic performance of high school students (12 th , 10 th , and 8 th graders) over the last three decades using survey data from the "Monitoring the Future" (MTF) project. 5 ...

Why do Canadian mothers have lower incomes than women who have never had children? Microdata from the 1995 GSS allow examination of two hypotheses:~1! mothers have spent more time out of the labour force, thus acquiring less human capital;~2! higher levels of unpaid work lead to fatigue and0or scheduling difficulties. Measuring work history does little to account for the 'family gap.' The estimated child penalty is reduced by allowing for 'human capital depreciation' and controlling for unpaid work hours, but the two hypotheses together cannot entirely explain the gap. JEL Classification: J0, J3Entrées et sorties: marché du travail et conséquences à long terme des interruptions dans l'expérience sur le marché du travail à cause des enfants. Ce mémoire se demande pourquoi les femmes canadiennes qui ont eu des enfants ont des revenus plus bas que ceux des femmes qui n'en ont pas eus. Les microdonnées de l'Enquête sociale générale de 1995 de Statistiques Canada permettent d'examiner deux hypothèses:~1! les mères ont passé plus de temps en dehors de la main d'oeuvre active et donc ont accumulé moins de capital humain, ou~2! des niveaux plus élevés de travail non-rémunéré peuvent entraîner fatigue ou difficultés d'organisation du temps. Des efforts pour construire une meilleure image de l'expérience de travail des femmes ne permettent pas d'expliquer cet 'écart familial,' même si la possibilité qu'il y ait 'dépréciation du capital humain' réduit la pénali-sation attachée au fait d'avoir un enfant en particulier si l'interruption dans l'expérience sur le marché du travail est suivie d'un changement d'emploi. Le nombre hebdomadaire d'heures de travail non payé est relié négativement aux revenus, et si l'on normalise pour tenir compte des heures de travail non payé cela réduit la pénalisation attachée au fait d'avoir un enfant. Cependant les deux hypothèses combinées ne suffisent pas pour expliquer l'écart.

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