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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Sofie Cairo; Ria Ivandić; Anne Sophie Lassen; Valentina Tartari |
| Abstract: | Persistent gender gaps in the labor market are largely driven by the underrepresentation of women at the top of most professions. We study how parenthood shapes gender gaps in academic careers using population-wide administrative and survey data linked to productivity and promotion records. Parenthood marks a sharp divergence in academic careers: one in three women exit academia following motherhood. Men also experience a decline in academic employment after fatherhood, but the effects are substantially smaller. For mothers, childbirth leads to a persistent decline in both tenure attainment and research output, while men’s trajectories on these margins are unaffected by parenthood. The child penalty on tenure is driven primarily by women’s higher exit rates from academia. Gender differences in career aspirations do not explain these findings; instead, childcare and mobility constraints play a central role. Child penalties are exacerbated in highly competitive environments and environments without senior female role models. |
| JEL: | A11 D63 J13 J16 J44 |
| Date: | 2026–02–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0092 |
| By: | Xavier Dufour-Simard; Jean-François Gauthier; Pierre-Carl Michaud |
| Abstract: | We study economic integration, intentions, and selection using a new survey of recent high-skilled immigrants to Canada (arrivals 2015–2025), linked to native-conditional earnings percentile ranks. We document five main results. First, high-skilled immigrants experience large earnings gains from migration, with average earnings roughly doubling within one year of arrival. Second, entry status strongly predicts early outcomes: immigrants on closed work permits outperform direct permanent residents, while students and open-permit entrants start lower, with students catching up faster. Third, nonpermanent residents do not, on average, integrate faster than permanent residents relative to natives, except for former students. Fourth, intentions to stay are more closely related to earnings growth than to income levels. Fifth, reweighting current selection criteria to predict earnings improves expected outcomes and shifts selection toward high-performing non-permanent residents, particularly those on closed permits. |
| Keywords: | immigration, temporary immigrants, selection, integration. |
| JEL: | J15 J61 F22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsi:cjpcha:06 |
| By: | Katherine Eriksson; Gregory Niemesh; Myera Rashid; Jacqueline Craig |
| Abstract: | We document that women’s economic mobility improved nearly a century before married women gained broad labor market opportunities. Using Massachusetts marriage registers linked to U.S. censuses (1850–1920), we create new father–child links for women to estimate intergenerational mobility and assortative mating, overcoming a key historical linkage barrier. Estimates from a structural marriage market model suggest assortative mating fell 61% from 1850–1870 to 1900–1920. Counterfactuals imply women’s mobility would have been far lower absent the decline in assortative mating. Had late cohorts faced early cohort sorting, the rank–rank slope between a woman’s father and husband would have been 2.5 times higher. |
| JEL: | J12 J62 N31 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34821 |
| By: | Krzysztof Karbownik; Helena Svaleryd; Jonas Vlachos; Xuemeng Wang |
| Abstract: | Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers’ mental health remains limited. Using population-level Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006–2024, we show that schools serving more disadvantaged students exhibit substantially higher rates of sickness absence, particularly for stress-related diagnoses. Exploiting within-teacher variation across student cohorts, we separate sorting from exposure and find that a one standard deviation increase in student disadvantage raises overall and stress-related sick leave by 3.6% and 8.7%, respectively. Survey evidence indicates that these effects operate through classroom conditions rather than workload or organizational differences. The findings establish client composition as a distinct and policy-relevant determinant of worker health in contact-intensive occupations. |
| JEL: | I10 I21 J63 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34841 |
| By: | Steffen Altmann; Robert Mahlstedt; Malte Rattenborg; Alexander Sebald; Sonja Settele; Johannes Wohlfart |
| Abstract: | In a field experiment with 9, 000 Danish job seekers, we study how unemployed workers’ wage expectations affect job search and re-employment. In our survey, we generate exogenous variation in respondents' wage expectations by informing a random half of them about re-employment wages of comparable workers. The intervention increases job-finding as measured in administrative data for both initially optimistic and initially pessimistic respondents, but through different channels: initial optimists lower their reservation wages and intensify search, while pessimists raise reservation wages and redirect applications toward local vacancies. Consistent with spatial search frictions, narrowing the geographic scope accelerates job finding among pessimists. |
| Keywords: | expectations, job search |
| JEL: | D83 D84 J64 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12420 |
| By: | Marina Tverdostup (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Dora Walter |
| Abstract: | Immigrants across Europe earn less and work in lower-quality jobs than natives, but the mechanisms underlying these disparities remain poorly understood. This paper asks whether immigrant disadvantage reflects barriers to accessing good jobs or skill deficits that persist even within similar positions. Using PIAAC Cycle 2 data (2018-2023) for eight European countries, we compare immigrants and natives working in the same occupation-industry cells and performing the same types of tasks. We find that immigrants score 35 to 40 points lower in literacy and numeracy than natives overall, with 70 to 75 percent of this gap persisting within jobs. Immigrants also perform fewer cognitively demanding tasks than natives in similar jobs. However, these task differences disappear entirely once we account for within-job skill gaps, while manual task use shows no immigrant-native differences at all. The evidence points to a skill-mediated mechanism immigrants perform fewer complex tasks because they have lower cognitive proficiency, not because employers restrict their access to such work. This finding redirects policy attention from workplace discrimination toward skill development and credential recognition as the key margins for improving immigrant labour market integration. |
| Keywords: | Immigration; cognitive skills; job tasks; skill mismatch; labour market integration; PIAAC |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J23 C81 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:271 |
| By: | Chloe Gibbs; Esra Kose; Maria Rosales-Rueda |
| Abstract: | Women’s employment remains highly sensitive to childcare constraints, making childcare availability a critical lever for supporting mothers’ labor force attachment. We study the effects of expanded full-day programming in Head Start, using the 2016 federal funding initiative that targeted grantees with low full-day enrollment. Linking administrative program data, geo-coded center locations, and household data on employment, we estimate a difference-in-differences design by comparing mothers of young children in treated and untreated areas. The policy increased full-day enrollment by 19 percent and raised single mothers’ employment (1.9%), hours (2.5%), and earnings (6.5%). Results show that extending program duration meaningfully improves maternal labor market outcomes. |
| JEL: | I28 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34831 |
| By: | Negar Khaliliaraghi; Petter Lundborg; Johan Vikström |
| Abstract: | Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender differences in productivity and pay without confounding from task or client allocation. Using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service between 2003 and 2014, we exploit a rotation scheme that quasi-randomly assigns job seekers to employment caseworkers. This ensures male and female caseworkers are matched with comparable clients. We find productivity differences are small: job seekers assigned to female and male caseworkers exit unemployment at similar rates, with no evidence of job-quality differences. Consistent with this, hourly wages—conditional on productivity—are nearly identical across genders. Despite this, female caseworkers earn about 8 percent less per year, due to differences in contracted and actual hours worked. We also find suggestive evidence that male caseworkers are more likely to be promoted than equally productive female colleagues. Overall, when tasks are standardized and performance is measured objectively, gender differences in productivity and hourly pay are minimal, while gaps in annual earnings and career progression persist. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps, productivity, wages, task allocation |
| JEL: | D84 I12 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12413 |
| By: | Brahma, Dweepobotee; Sangwan, Nikita |
| Abstract: | We study whether digital platforms for high-skilled professionals level the playing field or reproduce traditional gender inequalities. Using high-frequency data on physicians, we examine gender differences in labor supply, pricing, patient engagement, and platform visibility. Although the platform equalizes supply-side margins of working hours and fees, female physicians experience lower demand, reduced search visibility, and lower reputation metrics. Investigating the underlying mechanisms, experimental evidence indicates taste-based discrimination, while text-analysis of patient reviews finds no gender differential. These findings underscore the potential role of platforms in reducing institutional constraints but not demand-side biases, with reputation metrics playing a crucial mitigation role. |
| Keywords: | gender bias, digital platforms, healthcare, high-skilled professionals |
| JEL: | J16 J24 I11 O33 L86 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qmsrps:202602 |
| By: | Michel Beine; Arnaud Bourgain; Elisabeth Kempter; Melissa Tornari |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of a one-week entrepreneurial coaching program on overall and irregular migration intentions among young adults in the Dakar metropolitan area, Senegal. Using a randomized controlled trial implemented in partnership with an entrepreneurship training center in Dakar, we estimate treatment effects by comparing baseline and follow-up outcomes and address partial compliance using instrumental-variable methods. We find that participation in entrepreneurial coaching reduces emigration intentions by 12–20%, with effects concentrated among individuals connected to the labor market. The program indirectly reduces intended irregular migration by encouraging some individuals to remain in Senegal. We do not find that participation affected the migration mode of those who still intend to migrate. Overall, our findings provide experimental evidence from Senegal that entrepreneurship-based active labor market policies can shape migration aspirations by strengthening local economic attachment among working youth. |
| Keywords: | migration intention, migration deterrence, randomized experiment, entrepreneurship, irregular migration, Sub-saharan Africa |
| JEL: | O15 O55 F22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12486 |
| By: | Stefan Leknes (Statistics Norway); Hildegunn E. Stokke (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology); Eric Myran Wee (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology) |
| Abstract: | Superior employment matching is considered a key source of agglomeration economies, yet little is known about how urban scale affects matching over workers’ careers. Using full-count Norwegian registry data from 1995-2019, we estimate two-way worker and plant fixed effects to construct a worker-level measure of assortative matching. We find that job matches are more assortative in cities and that city workers progress more rapidly toward increasingly better matches over the career. These gains are concentrated among high-ability workers, while low-ability workers become increasingly mismatched in cities. For migrants, assortative matching initially declines following relocation but improves with subsequent job transitions. |
| Keywords: | Assortative matching, agglomeration economies, career progression, wage decomposition, skills, mobility, AKM-estimation |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–02–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nst:samfok:20626 |
| By: | Francisco Ferreira (London School of Economics); Paolo Brunori (London School of Economics); Pedro Salas-Rojo (CUNEF) |
| Abstract: | Researchers have sought to quantify the extent of inequality that is inherited from previous generations in multiple ways, including a large body of work on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity. Many of the most frequently used approaches to measuring mobility or inequality of opportunity fit within a general framework which involves, as a first step, an estimation of the extent to which inherited personal characteristics can predict current incomes. We suggest a new method, within that broad framework, which is sensitive to differences across the entire conditional distributions of relevant population subgroups, rather than just in their means – a feature that makes it particularly well-suited to measuring ex-post inequality of opportunity. Sensitivity to differences in higher moments of the conditional distributions allow for a more comprehensive assessment of inherited inequality. We apply this approach to household income distributions in China, India, South Africa, and the United States, to illustrate how the method performs in different settings. We find that inherited inequality accounts for large shares of total inequality, from 36% in the United States to 59% in China, 62% in India, and 81% in South Africa. |
| Keywords: | Inherited inequality, opportunity, mobility, transformation trees, China, India, South Africa, United States |
| JEL: | D31 D63 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2026-691 |
| By: | Ricard Grebol (UPPSALA UNIVERSITY); Margarita Machelett (BANCO DE ESPAÑA); Jan Stuhler (UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID); Ernesto Villanueva (BANCO DE ESPAÑA) |
| Abstract: | We study the evolution of intergenerational educational mobility and related distributional statistics in Spain. Over recent decades, mobility has risen by one-third, coinciding with pronounced declines in inequality and assortative mating among the same cohorts. To explore these patterns, we examine regional correlates of mobility, using split-sample techniques. A key finding from both national and regional analyses is the close association between mobility and assortative mating: spousal sorting accounts for nearly half of the regional variation in intergenerational correlations and also appears to be a key mediator of the negative relationship between inequality and mobility documented in recent studies. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational mobility, assortative mating, inequality, education |
| JEL: | I24 J12 J62 N34 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:2606 |
| By: | Thomas Dohmen; Bart Golsteyn; Hans Grönqvist; Edvin Hertegård; Gerard Pfann; Gerard A. Pfann |
| Abstract: | This study examines how parenting styles predict children’s lifetime outcomes. Using a Swedish dataset which combines rich survey information on parenting styles with administrative records tracking children over five decades, we find that authoritarian parenting is negatively associated with children’s long-term success, especially regarding their educational attainment. The results for other parenting styles are more mixed. Authoritarian parenting remains a robust predictor of adverse outcomes even when accounting for ability and family background. We identify children’s knowledge accumulation and parental educational expectations as key mechanisms explaining these results. |
| Keywords: | child rearing, human capital, skill formation |
| JEL: | I24 J13 J24 R20 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12407 |
| By: | Dor Leventer |
| Abstract: | A growing body of research estimates child penalties, the gender gap in the effect of parenthood on labor market earnings, using event studies that normalize treatment effects by counterfactual earnings. I formalize the identification framework underlying this approach, which I term Normalized Triple Differences (NTD), and show it does not identify the conventional target estimand when the parallel trends assumption in levels is violated. Insights from human capital theory suggest such violations are likely: higher-ability individuals delay childbirth and have steeper earnings growth, a mechanism that causes conventional estimates to understate child penalties for early-treated parents. Using Israeli administrative data, a bias-bounding exercise suggests substantial understatement for early groups. As a solution, I propose targeting the effect of parenthood on the gender earnings ratio and show this new estimand is identified under NTD. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.07486 |
| By: | Zigova, Katarina; Zwick, Thomas |
| Abstract: | We find a substantial and long-lasting positive effect of the introduction of regional minimum wages on training incidence and intensity. We apply a stacked difference-in-differences estimation to identify the dynamic effect of high minimum wages introduced in several Swiss cantons between 2018 and 2022. Employers invest more in formal training for retained employees during working hours, covering content beyond their main economic activity. We conclude that employers increase the productivity of their employees to retain the underlying rents. We carefully rule out confounding factors and offer an explanation for the difference between our and some earlier findings. |
| Keywords: | minimum wages, continuing training, staggered policy introduction |
| JEL: | J08 J51 M53 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:336769 |
| By: | James J. Heckman; Haihan Tian; Zijian Zhang; Jin Zhou |
| Abstract: | Dynamic complementarity is the concept that past investments that lead to higher stocks of skill at one age promote the growth of skills from investment at that age. We define and provide evidence on dynamic complementarity using unique Chinese data from a home visiting program for young children targeted to parents in rural China. In addition, we investigate growth in learning due to innate, parental, and environmental factors that occur in the absence of any formal intervention. |
| JEL: | C1 C5 D83 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34833 |