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. 2023 Jul 18;120(29):e2209740120.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2209740120. Epub 2023 Jul 10.

Large motherhood penalties in US administrative microdata

Douglas Almond  1   2 , Yi Cheng  1 , Cecilia Machado  3   4
Affiliations

Large motherhood penalties in US administrative microdata

Douglas Almond et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

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. We estimate one of the largest motherhood penalties in "female-breadwinner" 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.

Keywords: LEHD; gender gaps; labor market inequality; motherhood penalty.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Main results. Note: The figures display both the fully non-parametric estimates (i.e. quarter-specific averages after removing gender-specific age fixed effects and time fixed effects in circles and triangles) alongside with estimated slopes and intercepts of the semi-parametric approach. For more direct visual comparison, plots are shifted vertically to normalize the pre-childbirth benchmark labor market outcome levels, i.e., the 8th quarter prior to childbirth, to be positioned at zero. The pre-childbirth earnings peak for male in (D) is a mechanical result of sample definition, since the earnings curves are conditional on individuals being employed sometime 5 to 8 quarters before childbirth.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Earnings—employed before birth sample. Note: The figures display both the fully non-parametric estimates (i.e. quarter-specific averages after removing gender-specific age fixed effects and time fixed effects in circles and triangles) alongside with estimated slopes and intercepts of the semi-parametric approach. For more direct visual comparison, plots are shifted vertically to normalize the pre-childbirth benchmark labor market outcome levels, i.e., the 8th quarter prior to childbirth, to be positioned at zero. The pre-childbirth earnings peak for male is a mechanical result of sample definition, since the earnings curves are conditional on individuals being employed sometime 5 to 8 quarters before childbirth.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Family effects: Earnings. Note: The figure displays both the fully non-parametric estimates (i.e. quarter-specific averages after removing gender-specific age fixed effects and time fixed effects in circles and triangles) alongside with estimated slopes and intercepts of the semi-parametric approach. For more direct visual comparison, plots are shifted vertically to normalize the pre-childbirth benchmark labor market outcome levels, i.e., the 8th quarter prior to childbirth, to be positioned at zero. The pre-childbirth earnings peak for male is a mechanical result of sample definition, since the earnings curves are conditional on individuals being employed sometime 5 to 8 quarters before childbirth.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Point estimates and confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Y. Chung, B. Downs, D. H. Sandler, R. Sienkiewicz, “The parental gender earnings gap in the United States” (Working Papers 17-68, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).
    1. H. Kleven, C. Landais, J. E. Søgaard, “Does biology drive child penalties? Evidence from biological and adoptive families” (Working Paper 27130, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020).
    1. Angelov N., Johansson P., Lindahl E., Parenthood and the gender gap in pay. J. Labor Econ. 34, 545–579 (2016).
    1. Goldin C., Mitchell J., The new life cycle of women’s employment: Disappearing humps, sagging middles, expanding tops. J. Econ. Persp. 31, 161–182 (2017).

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