{"title":"Is There a Motherhood Wage Penalty for Highly Skilled Women","authors":"Gafni Dalit, Siniver Erez","doi":"10.1515/BEJEAP-2013-0191","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We use a unique data set of all individuals who graduated from universities in Israel during the period 1995–2008 in order to investigate the widening of the gender wage gap during the years following graduation. It is found that the main explanation is having children, rather than skills or academic background. The results show that each additional child reduces a woman’s wage by 6.6%, and increases a man’s wage by 3.4%. Furthermore, we examine three channels that may explain the motherhood penalty: periods of non-employment, a shift to the public sector and lower-paying firms and the timing of births. Having children increases a woman’s period of non-employment while decreasing a man’s, and each month of non-employment due to maternity leave reduces a woman’s wage by 1.0%, while non-employment reduces a man’s wage by only 0.6%. Mothers tend to shift from the private to the public sector and from higher-paying to lower-paying firms, which offer a more flexible and more convenient work environment, at the cost of a lower salary. Finally, a delay in having children increases a woman’s wage while having little, if any, effect on a man’s wage. Furthermore, controlling for this variable reduces the estimated motherhood penalty.","PeriodicalId":47400,"journal":{"name":"B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy","volume":"134 1","pages":"1353-1380"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/BEJEAP-2013-0191","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
We use a unique data set of all individuals who graduated from universities in Israel during the period 1995–2008 in order to investigate the widening of the gender wage gap during the years following graduation. It is found that the main explanation is having children, rather than skills or academic background. The results show that each additional child reduces a woman’s wage by 6.6%, and increases a man’s wage by 3.4%. Furthermore, we examine three channels that may explain the motherhood penalty: periods of non-employment, a shift to the public sector and lower-paying firms and the timing of births. Having children increases a woman’s period of non-employment while decreasing a man’s, and each month of non-employment due to maternity leave reduces a woman’s wage by 1.0%, while non-employment reduces a man’s wage by only 0.6%. Mothers tend to shift from the private to the public sector and from higher-paying to lower-paying firms, which offer a more flexible and more convenient work environment, at the cost of a lower salary. Finally, a delay in having children increases a woman’s wage while having little, if any, effect on a man’s wage. Furthermore, controlling for this variable reduces the estimated motherhood penalty.
期刊介绍:
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy welcomes submissions that employ microeconomics to analyze issues in business, consumer behavior, and public policy. We aim to be an international forum for scholarship, whether the scholarship considers an issue that is general or that pertains to a particular country or region, but authors should bear in mind that our readers come from around the world. Potential issues of interest include: the interaction of firms, the functioning of markets, the effects of domestic and international policy, and the design of organizations and institutions.