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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Jonas Jessen; Lavinia Kinne; Michele Battisti |
| Abstract: | Child penalties in labour market outcomes are well-documented: after childbirth, employment and earnings of mothers drop persistently compared to fathers. Beyond gender norms, a potential driver could be the loss in labour market skills due to mothers' longer employment interruptions. This paper estimates child penalties in adult cognitive skills by adapting the pseudo-panel approach to a single cross-section of 29 countries in the PIAAC dataset. We find a long-term drop in numeracy skills after childbirth of 0.12 standard deviations for fathers and a 0.06 standard deviations larger drop for mothers with the difference being marginally significant. Estimates of child penalties in skills strongly depend on controlling for pre-determined characteristics, especially education. Additionally, there is no evidence for worse occupational skill matches for mothers after childbirth. Our findings suggest that changes in general labour market skills can at best explain a small fraction of child penalties in labour market outcomes, and that a cross-sectional estimation of child penalties can be sensitive to characteristics of the outcome variable. |
| Keywords: | child penalty, cognitive skills, gender inequality, PIAAC |
| JEL: | I20 J13 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11874 |
| By: | Ana Rodríguez-González (AQR-IREA, Department of Econometrics, Statistics & Applied Economics, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | Men’s historical advantage in educational attainment has recently been reversed in many countries. I study the implications for family formation of the new female advantage in education in the marriage market, exploiting a Finnish school reform that increased women’s relative level of education. I analyze the reduced-form relationship between marriage market exposure to the reform and family outcomes. I find decreases in marriage and fertility in marriage markets with a larger female educational advantage. These results are mostly driven by the increasing mismatch between the educational distributions of men and women, and might have negative consequences for low-educated men’s mental health. |
| Keywords: | JEL classification: J12, J13, J16, I10. |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202420 |
| By: | Elisa Brini (Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti", Universita' di Firenze); Raffaele Guetto (Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti", Universita' di Firenze); Daniele Vignoli (Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti", Universita' di Firenze) |
| Abstract: | Traditional economic theories link male income to higher fertility and female income to increased opportunity costs. However, shifting gender roles and socio-economic changes challenge these assumptions, with evidence suggesting rising income prerequisites of parenthood in high-income countries. This research note examines the role of income in first childbirth for men and women from 2006 to 2020 across 16 Western European countries based on longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and discrete-time logistic regressions. Results show that higher income consistently increases the transition to parenthood in all countries, with stronger effects for women. Over time, income has become a stronger predictor of parenthood. Widening fertility differentials across income groups are primarily driven by declining first-birth probabilities among lower-income men and women, supporting the hypothesis of increasing income prerequisites of parenthood. In four countries, the positive income effect for men weakens, which we interpret as a signal of changing gender roles. In one country, widening fertility differentials are driven by increasing fertility among high-income women, consistent with the argument of declining opportunity costs. Overall, findings suggest that the income prerequisites of parenthood have risen in high-income countries, strongly contributing to increasing income inequalities in fertility. |
| Keywords: | Fertility, Income, Gender roles, Opportunity costs, EU-SILC. |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 D31 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fir:econom:wp2025_05 |