Trends in Women’s Relative Earnings Within Couples Across the Transition to Parenthood in Sweden, 1987–2007

Abstract

This article applies a couple perspective to assessing gender inequality in Sweden—a setting with high maternal labour force participation, a long history of family policy investment, and strong norms of gender equality. We address open questions about how couples’ earnings following parenthood have changed over time, and how patterns of inequality in couples’ earnings have played out across educational groups. Our study uses fixed effects methods and register data covering the total population of heterosexual couples giving birth in Sweden between 1987 and 2007 (N = 587,414 couples). It examines change in the female partner’s share of total couple earnings from 2 years before to 8 years after first birth across parent cohorts differentiated by his and her education. Women’s earnings share declines steeply following birth, across all groups. Results show modestly smaller declines among parents in the latest cohort in the year directly following childbirth. Change is most pronounced among couples with a highly educated female partner, and it appears driven by a marked dip in fathers’ earnings that is new to this recent generation of men. Recent movement towards within-couple equality in Sweden appears driven by men’s work adjustments, pointing to an important shift in the allocation of care work within couples.

Flexible working for all? How collective constructions by Austrian employers and employees perpetuate gendered inequalities

“…Even though the gap between women's and men's employment in general has decreased in Austria and women indeed increasingly participate in the labor market (Schmidt et al 2020), this country is characterized by high and growing part-time rates among women and a pronounced and gendered part-time culture, as compared to other European countries (EIGE 2014; Barbieri et al 2019;Padavic et al 2019;Plantenga & Remery 2010). This stands in stark contrast to countries with stronger norms of gender equality (such as Sweden, Denmark or Norway), where change has been driven predominantly by men's work adjustments (Nylin et al 2021;Dunatchik & Özcan 2020;Kvande & Brandth 2019).…”

“…The constructions implied that ideally, women with children have to be supported by a variety of increased imaginable working time and working place options, by models such as part-time leadership, by institutional care or nannies. They would not need support from their male partners who may also take parental leave and reduce or flexibly adjust their working hours to take over childcare responsibilities -one crucial measure towards more gender equality in the division of paid and unpaid labor (Nylin et al 2021;Dunatchik & Özcan 2020). This also has consequences for gender relations in parental couples, between parental partners, regarding their division of paid and unpaid work.…”

Change and Variation in U.S. Couples’ Earnings Equality Following Parenthood

“…Nylin et al. (2021) showed that mothers’ earnings share declined somewhat less over time among couples having children from 1987 to 2007 in the Swedish registers, and Bergsvik et al. (2020) reported similar findings for the years 2005–2014 based on Norwegian registers.…”

“…2020; Lundberg and Rose 2000; Musick, Bea, and Gonalons‐Pons 2020; Nylin et al. 2021). U.S. fixed effect estimates from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) show that wives’ relative earnings drop 8 percentage points in the year after first birth in the 1990s and 2000s (Musick, Bea, and Gonalons‐Pons 2020).…”

“…Nylin et al. (2021) found that relative increases in mothers’ earnings share over time were most pronounced among the college‐educated and driven by declines in fathers’ earnings—findings that again reflect distinct features of country context, namely Swedish policies designed to reduce gender inequality at home (Sainsbury 1999).…”