Women’s Wages and Fertility Revisited Evidence from Norway (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
In this paper, we a) study the consequences of parenthood on earnings trajectories over the life-course, and b) analyze the impact of timing of parenthood on cumulative earnings in Sweden. We argue that parenthood can have long-term impacts on earnings trajectories, which can accumulate into considerable effects over time. Such cumulative effects can shape socioeconomic and gender inequalities in earnings and at later age, pensions. We analyze data from Swedish population registers, using the full cohorts of men and women born 1972-81. Our findings indicate that parenthood has negative effects on women’s and small effects on men’s earnings trajectories. Over time, the former accumulate into major parenthood penalties. These penalties are smaller for women who postpone motherhood due to the shorter time these women have been exposed to motherhood penalties. Parenthood timing can thus affect long-term gender and socioeconomic earnings inequalities.
Welfare state context, female earnings and childbearing
XXVI IUSSP Population …, 2009
This paper investigates the role of female earnings in childbearing decisions in two very different European contexts. By applying event history techniques to German and Danish register data during 1981-2001, we demonstrate how female earnings relate to first, second and third birth risks. Our study shows that female income is rather positively associated with fertility in Denmark, while the relationship is the opposite in West Germany. We interpret our finding against the background of social policies that encourage Danish women to get established in the labor market before having children, while German policies during the 1980s and 1990s rather discouraged maternal employment.
Trends over time in his and her earnings following parenthood in Sweden
2019
Abstract: This study brings a couple perspective to assess change and variation in gender equality over time in a setting with high maternal labor force participation, a long history of family policy investment, and strong norms of gender equality. Using fixed effects methods and Swedish register data covering the total population of couples becoming parents between 1987 and 2007, we investigate how trajectories of within-couple earnings inequality around the time of a first birth have changed over time and varied by couples’ relative educational levels. Our descriptive findings indicate that the immediate loss in women’s share of couples’ earnings after the first child has lessened over time, but this change virtually disappears in our fixed effect models. Among couples in which women have tertiary education, we find a small decrease in couples’ income inequality that holds with the introduction of fixed effects and time-varying controls. This appears to be driven by a decline in m...
Entry into motherhood: The effect of wages
Using the ECHP, we explored the determinants of having the first child in Spain. Our main goal was to study the relation between female wages and the decision to enter motherhood. Since the offered wage of non-working women is not observed, we estimate it and impute a potential wage to each woman (working and non-working). This potential wage enable us to investigate the effect of wages (the opportunity cost of time non-worked and dedicated to children) on the decision to have the first child, for both workers and non-workers. Contrary to previous results, we found that female wages are positively related to the likelihood of having the first child. This result suggests that the income effect overcomes the substitution effect when non-participants opportunity cost is also taken into account.
Fertility and Family Labor Supply
Social Science Research Network, 2022
We study the role of fertility adjustments for the labor market responsiveness of men and women. First, we use longitudinal Danish register data and tax reforms from 2009 to provide new empirical evidence on asymmetric fertility adjustments to tax changes of men and women. Second, we quantify the importance of these fertility adjustments for understanding the labor supply responsiveness of couples through a life-cycle model of family labor supply and fertility. Allowing fertility adjustments increases the labor supply responsiveness of women by 28%. These adjustments affect human capital accumulation and has permanent implications for the gender wage gap within couples.
Life-Cycle Labor Supply, Timing of Births, and the Gender Wage Gap
2005
We study the quantitative effects of changes in timing of births, the decrease in fertility levels, and the increase in the relative wage of women to men, in levels and returns to experience, on life-cycle labor supply decisions of married women born between 1940 and 1960. We ...
Time is Money – The Influence of Parenthood Timing on Wages
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences:
Fertility and Female Employment: a Different View of the Last 50 Years
2005
Over the period from 1964 to 2003, married female employment almost doubled from 40 per cent in 1964 to 71 per cent in 2003. Disaggregated by age and education, changes were most pronounced during childbearing ages and increasing in education levels. At the same time, age at birth of first child as well as life-cycle wage profiles have increased the most for highly educated women. Given those facts, our purpose is that of "testing" if theories of the determinants of female labor supply are robust to a life-cycle representation of the fertility and labor supply choice, and, in the affirmative case, how much of the data from the last fifty years they capture. To this end, we build a quantitative life-cycle model of female labor force participation and child related choices with experience accumulation. First, we calibrate the model to the 1940 cohort's lifecycle participation, wages and distribution of completed fertility. Then, we investigate how much of the observed changes in behavior between cohorts born in 1940 and 1960 can be explained by our theoretical model and by two exogenous factors: (i) reduction of gender gap in wage levels, (ii) a decrease in the price of consumer durables useful in home production. To do this we use the microeconomic data for the 1940 to 1960 cohorts, as recorded by the CPS as well as Census data. We find that through our mechanism the effect of changes in the exogenous gender wage gap as well as improvements in the home technology, have significant effects on female labor supply but that these effects are smaller than previously reported, typically affect participation at later ages more than early in life and that, thereby, neither can account for the whole change in married female labor supply. * We thank Michele Boldrin, Zvi Eckstein, and Larry Jones for helpful comments.