Large motherhood penalties in US administrative microdata

Resumo

Whereas previous research has described motherhood penalties in US survey data, we leverage administrative data on 811,000 quarterly earnings histories from the US Unemployment Insurance program. We analyze contexts where smaller motherhood penalties might be expected: couples where the woman outearns her male partner prior to childbearing, at firms that are headed by women, and at firms that are predominantly women. Our startling result is that none of these propitious contexts appear to diminish the motherhood penalty, and indeed, the gap often increases in magnitude over time following childbearing.Weestimate one of the largest motherhood penalties in “femalebreadwinner” families, where higher-earning women experience a 60% drop from their prechildbirth earnings relative to their male partners. Turning to proximate mechanisms, women are less likely to switch to a higher-paying firm postchildbearing than men and are substantially more likely to quit the labor force. On the whole, our findings are discouraging relative even to existing research on motherhood penalties.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Artigo científico

Ano

2023

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/38500

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Motherhood penaltyGender wage gapLabor market inequalityPenalidade da maternidadeDesigualdade salarial de gêneroDesigualdade no mercado de trabalhoEconomiaMaternidadeDesigualdade de rendaMercado de trabalho