nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2017‒06‒11
six papers chosen by
Michele Battisti
ifo Institut

  1. The gender gap in early career wage growth: the role of Children, job mobility and occupational mobility By Abrar Reshid, Abdulaziz
  2. Separation, child-support and well-being in Uruguay By Marisa Buchelli
  3. Father Absence and the Educational Gender Gap By Lundberg, Shelly
  4. Adults Behaving Badly: The Effects of Own and Peer Parents' Incarceration on Adolescent Criminal Activities By Fletcher, Jason M.
  5. Parental Leave, (In)formal Childcare and Long-term Child Outcomes By Danzer, Natalia; Halla, Martin; Schneeweis, Nicole; Zweimüller, Martina
  6. Closing or Reproducing the Gender Gap? Parental Transmission, Social Norms and Education Choice By Humlum, Maria Knoth; Nandrup, Anne Brink; Smith, Nina

  1. By: Abrar Reshid, Abdulaziz (Department of Economics and Statistics, Linneaus University)
    Abstract: During the first 10 years in the Swedish labor market, male university graduates experience a faster wage growth than their female counterparts. This paper investigates the role of job mobility and upward occupational mobility in explaining the gender gap in early career wage growth. The analysis reveals that although job mobility and upward occupational mobility significantly contribute to the early career wage growth of both men and women, the size of the wage growth effect of both types of mobility is significantly lower for women. This female mobility penalty persists even after accounting for gender differences in observed individual and job characteristics, as well as unobserved individual specific heterogeneity. We further investigate to what extent this mobility penalty of women is explained by parental status. We find that the female penalty in returns to upward occupational mobility is largely linked to the timing of childbirth and childcare, which suggests the presence of a trade-off between work and family. Regarding job mobility, a significant female penalty is found among the childless as well as among parents, and anticipation of parenthood within the next year is found to exacerbate the female penalty in returns to job mobility even further.
    Keywords: gender gap; wage growth; job mobility; occupational mobility and children
    JEL: J13 J16 J31 J62
    Date: 2017–05–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2017_005&r=dem
  2. By: Marisa Buchelli (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Departamento de EconomíaAuthor-Name: Andrea Vigorito; Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía)
    Abstract: There is scarce quantitative evidence on the well-being effects of separation and divorce, and the specific role of child support payments in Latin American countries, due to the paucity of longitudinal data. This article contributes to fill this gap by analyzing the impact of family breakdown and child support in Uruguay on a wide set of household and child outcomes, based on two waves of a longitudinal study (Estudio Longitudinal del Bienestar en Uruguay), that follows-up children that were first graders at public primary schools in 2004. We restrict our study to households composed by married or cohabiting couples in the baseline (2004). The effect is estimated using a combined difference in difference- PSM method. Our main findings show that separation entails a significant per capita household income loss (12%) and increases deprivation in terms of income poverty and access to durable goods, for custodial mothers. However, the income fall is partially mitigated by paternal child support payments, public transfers, changes in living arrangements and behavioral responses among mothers, whose labor earnings increase significantly after separation. Meanwhile, separation seems to worsen child educational outcomes, particularly grade repetition. However, this disadvantage vanishes for those children receiving transfers from non co-resident fathers.
    Keywords: divorce, child support, Uruguay, panel data
    JEL: J12 J13 I30
    Date: 2017–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-05-17&r=dem
  3. By: Lundberg, Shelly (University of California, Santa Barbara)
    Abstract: The educational attainment of young women now exceeds that of young men in most of the devel-oped world, and women account for about 60% of new four-year college graduates in the United States. Several studies have suggested that the increase in single-parent households may be contributing to the growing gender gap in education, as boys are more vulnerable to the negative effects of father absence and economic disadvantage than girls. Using data on recent cohorts of young men and women from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), I find evi-dence consistent with other studies that boys are relatively more likely to experience problems in school, including school suspensions, when their father is absent, but also that girls are relatively more likely to experience depression in adolescence, particularly in step-father families. By the time Add Health subjects are young adults, there is no evidence that father absence early in life is more strongly associated with lower rates of college graduation for men, compared to women, in either cross-sectional or family fixed-effect models.
    Keywords: education, college graduation, gender, family structure, father absence, school quality
    JEL: I20 J12 J16
    Date: 2017–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10814&r=dem
  4. By: Fletcher, Jason M. (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
    Abstract: A maturing literature across the social sciences suggests important impacts of the intergenerational transmission of crime as well as peer effects that determine youth criminal activities. This paper ex-plores these channels by examining gender-specific effects of maternal and paternal incarceration from both own-parents and classmate-parents. This paper also adds to the literature by exploiting across-cohort, within school exposure to peer parent incarceration to enhance causal inference. While the intergenerational correlations of criminal activities are similar by gender (father-son/mother-son), the results suggest that peer parent incarceration transmits effects largely along gender lines, which is suggestive of specific learning mechanisms. Peer maternal incarceration increases adolescent female criminal activities and reduces male crime and the reverse is true for peer paternal incarceration. These effects are strongest for youth reports of selling drugs and engaging in physical violence. In contrast, the effects of peer parental incarceration on other outcomes, such as GPA, do not vary by gender.
    Keywords: crime, peer effects, intergenerational transmission
    JEL: J00 J24 J62
    Date: 2017–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10797&r=dem
  5. By: Danzer, Natalia (Ifo Institute for Economic Research); Halla, Martin (University of Innsbruck); Schneeweis, Nicole (University of Linz); Zweimüller, Martina (University of Linz)
    Abstract: We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child out-comes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in Austria exploiting a sharp birthday cutoff-based discontinuity in the eligibility for extended parental leave and geographical variation in formal childcare. We find that estimated treatment effects on long-term child outcomes differ substantially according to the availability of formal childcare and the mother's counter-factual work behavior. We show that extending parental leave has significant positive effects on chil-dren's health and human capital outcomes only if the reform induces a replacement of informal child-care with maternal care. We conclude that care provided by mothers (or formal institutions) is superior to informal care-arrangements.
    Keywords: parental leave, formal childcare, informal childcare, child development, maternal labor supply, fertility
    JEL: J13 H52 J22 J12 I38
    Date: 2017–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10812&r=dem
  6. By: Humlum, Maria Knoth (Aarhus University); Nandrup, Anne Brink (Aarhus University); Smith, Nina (Aarhus University)
    Abstract: Over the last decade, the economic literature has increasingly focused on the importance of gender identity and sticky gender norms in an attempt to explain the persistence of the gender gaps. Using detailed register data on the latest cohorts of Danish labour market entrants, this paper examines the intergenerational correlation in gender-stereotypical choice of education. Although to some extent picking up inherited and acquired skills, our results suggest that if parents exhibit gender stereotypical labour market behaviour, children of the same sex are more likely to choose a gender stereotypical education. The associations are strongest for sons. Exploiting the detailed nature of our data, we use birth order and sibling sex composition to shed light on the potential channels through which gender differences in educational preferences are transmitted across generations. We propose that such transmissions may attenuate the final closing of the gender gap.
    Keywords: intergenerational transmission, gender differences, gender identity, social norms
    JEL: I23 J16 J24
    Date: 2017–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10790&r=dem

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