Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market

Abstract

We are grateful to Steven Durlauf and participants at the EALE/SOLE/AASLE World Conference for helpful comments and suggestions. Lim Zhi Hao provided outstanding research assistance. 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 They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation

“…We also demonstrate that our conclusions are robust to accounting for frictions, equilibrium effects, and fertility responses. 4 Our paper contributes to the large literature on gender inequality in the labor market (reviewed by Bertrand 2011 andOlivetti andPetrongolo 2016) and especially to recent work showing the crucial role of parenthood (Bertrand, Goldin and Katz 2010;Kleven, Landais and Søgaard 2019;Kleven, Landais, Posch, Steinhauer and Zweimuller 2019;Kuziemko, Pan, Shen and Washington 2018;Cortés and Pan 2020). Our paper also contributes to a burgeoning literature on the impact of family policies (reviewed by Olivetti and Petrongolo 2017), including parental leave schemes (see e.g., Lalive and Zweimüller 2009;Schönberg and Ludsteck 2014;Dahl, Løken, Mogstad and Salvanes 2016) and child care subsidies (see e.g., Baker, Gruber and Milligan 2008;Havnes and Mogstad 2011).…”

Effects of the COVID-19 Recession on the US Labor Market: Occupation, Family, and Gender

“…The mean child penalty can be decomposed into explained effects, such as differences in mean values of background characteristics like education and race, and unexplained effects, which include the child penalty and different returns on non-child characteristics for mothers, compared to nonmothers or men. In a recent sample of such work, Cortes and Pan (2020) estimate that the long-run child penalty-three years or more after having the first childfor US mothers is 39 percent, and they also find that child-related penalties account for two-thirds of the overall gender wage gap in the last decade.…”

The Gendered Impact of the COVID-19 Recession on the US Labor Market

“…Likely, gender norms played a role, but assuming that parents decide on the distribution of child supervision responsibilities in a cooperative fashion, this response should be driven by differences in the opportunity cost as measured by wages. It is well documented that in the United States and other advanced economies, there is a substantial child penalty for mothers that reduces their wages throughout the course of their lifetime (Cortes and Pan (2020)).…”

“…The mean child penalty can be decomposed into explained effects, such as differences in mean values of background characteristics like education and race, and unexplained effects, which include the child penalty and different returns on non-child characteristics for mothers, compared to non-mothers or men. Cortes and Pan (2020) estimate that the long run child penaltythree years or more after having the first child-for US mothers is 39% and they also find that child related penalties account for two thirds of the overall gender wage gap in the last decade.…”