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on Gender |
| By: | Emily Nix; Martin Eckhoff Andresen (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | Women experience significant reductions in labor market income following the birth of children, while their male partners experience no such income drops. This “relative child penalty” has been well documented and accounts for a significant amount of the gender income gap. In this paper we do two things. First, we use a simple household model to better understand the potential mechanisms driving the child penalty, which include gender norms around child care, female preferences for child care, efficient specialization within households, and the biological cost of giving birth. The model, combined with the estimated child penalties for heterosexual and same sex couples, suggests that the child penalty experienced by women in heterosexual couples is primarily explained by female preferences for child care and gender norms, with a smaller contribution due to the biological costs of giving birth. Second, we provide causal estimates on the impact of two family policies aimed at reducing the relative child penalty: paternity leave and subsidized early child care. Our precise and robust regression discontinuity results show no significant impact of paternity leave use on the relative child penalty. Early subsidized care seems to have more promise as a policy tool for affecting child penalties, as we find a 25% reduction in child penalties per year of child care use from a large Norwegian reform that expanded access to child care. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap; labor supply; child penalty; paternity leave; child care; same sex couples; event study; regression discontinuity; instrumental variables |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J22 J71 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:902&r=all |
| By: | Andrew Shephard (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania) |
| Abstract: | We present a general discrete choice framework for analyzing household formation and dissolution decisions in an equilibrium limited-commitment collective framework that allows for marriage both within and across birth cohorts. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics and American Community Survey data, we apply our framework to empirically implement a time allocation model with labor market earnings risk, human capital accumulation, home production activities, fertility, and both within- and across-cohort marital matching. Our model replicates the bivariate marriage distribution by age, and explains some of the most salient life-cycle patterns of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and time allocation behavior. We use our estimated model to quantify the impact of the significant reduction in the gender wage gap since the 1980s on marriage outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Marriage, divorce, collective household models, life-cycle, search and matching, intrahousehold allocation, structural estimation |
| JEL: | C78 D13 D83 J12 J16 J22 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2019–03–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:19-003&r=all |