Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?

The Gender Wage Gap and Parenthood: Occupational Characteristics Across European Countries

Different strands of research analyse gender occupational differences and how they relate to differential earnings, especially among parents juggling family demands. We use rich data from PIAAC across a subset of European countries and match occupational characteristics to individuals' jobs using the O*NET database to analyse, first, whether there are gender differences in the occupational characteristics of jobs, particularly among parents, and second, whether the return to key occupational characteristics varies by gender. Compared to men, women's jobs generally require more contact with others, less autonomy in decision-making, and less time pressure. In addition, positions held by mothers involve both less leadership expectations and less intensive use of machines than those held by fathers. Further, mothers receive a lower return to both of these occupational characteristics than fathers do. Finally, even though gaps in occupational characteristics such as leadership jointly with the differential sorting of mothers and fathers across sectors explain part of the gender wage gap in Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition models, especially in Continental Europe, a large share remains unexplained particularly in Eastern and Southern European countries.

Factors shaping the gender wage gap among college-educated computer science workers

Encouraging women to pursue STEM employment is frequently touted as a means of reducing the gender wage gap. We examine whether the attributes of computer science workers-who account for nearly half of those working in STEM jobs-explain the persistent gender wage gap in computer science, using American Community Survey (ACS) data from 2009 to 2019. Our analysis focuses on working-age respondents between the ages of 22 and 60 who had a college degree and were employed full-time. We use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of logged wages on observed characteristics, before turning to regression decomposition techniques to estimate what proportion of the gender wage gap would remain if men and women were equally rewarded for the same attributes-such as parenthood or marital status, degree field, or occupation. Women employed in computer science jobs earned about 86.6 cents for every dollar that men earned-a raw gender gap that is smaller than it is for the overall labor force (where it was 82 percent). Controlling for compositional effects (family attributes, degree field and occupation) narrows the gender wage gap, though women continue to earn 9.1 cents per dollar less than their male counterparts. But differential returns to family characteristics and human capital measures account for almost two-thirds of the gender wage gap in computer science jobs. Women working in computer science receive both a marriage and parenthood premium relative to unmarried or childless women, but these are significantly smaller than the bonus that married men and fathers receive over their childless and unmarried peers. Men also receive sizable wage premiums for having STEM degrees in computer science and engineering when they work in computer science jobs, advantages that do not accrue to women. Closing the gender wage gap in computer science requires treating women more like men, not just increasing their representation.

Double Disadvantage in a Nordic Welfare State: A Demographic Analysis of the Single-Parent Employment Gap in Finland, 1987-2018

This study demonstrates how an evolving negative educational gradient of single parenthood can interact with changing labour market conditions to shape labour market inequalities between partnered and single parents. We analysed trends in employment rates among Finnish partnered and single mothers and fathers from 1987 to 2018. In the late 1980s' Finland, single mothers' employment was internationally high and on par with that of partnered mothers, and single fathers' employment rate was just below that of partnered fathers. The gaps between single and partnered parents emerged and increased during the 1990s recession, and after the 2008 economic crisis, it widened further. In 2018, the employment rates of single parents were 11-12 percentage points lower than those of partnered parents. We ask how much of this single-parent employment gap could be explained by compositional factors, and the widening educational gradient of single parenthood in particular. We use Chevan and Sutherland's decomposition technique on register data, which allows us to decompose the single-parent employment gap into the composition and rate effects by each category of the background variables. The findings point to an increasing double disadvantage of single parents: the gradually evolving disadvantage in educational backgrounds together with large differences in employment rates between single and partnered parents with low education explain large parts of the widening employment gap. Sociodemographic changes in interaction with changes in the labour market can produce inequalities by family structure in a Nordic society known for its extensive support for combining childcare and employment for all parents.

Division of Labour and Parental Mental Health and Relationship Well-Being during COVID-19 Pandemic-Mandated Homeschooling

While the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way parents partition tasks between one another, it is not clear how these division of labour arrangements affect well-being. Pre-pandemic research offers two hypotheses: economic theory argues optimal outcomes result from partners specialising in different tasks, whereas psychological theory argues for a more equitable division of labour. The question of which approach optimizes well-being is more pressing in recent times, with COVID-19 school closures leaving many couples with the burden of homeschooling. It is unknown whether specialisation or equity confer more benefits for mandated homeschoolers, relative to non-homeschoolers or voluntary homeschoolers. Couples (n = 962) with children in grades 1-5 completed measures of workload division and parental well-being. A linear mixed modelling in the total sample revealed that specialisation, but not equity, promoted increased parental emotional and relationship well-being. These relations were moderated by schooling status: voluntary homeschoolers' well-being benefitted from specialisation, whereas mandated homeschoolers' well-being did not benefit from either strategy; non-homeschoolers well-being benefitted from both strategies. Across the mixed-gender couples, mothers' and fathers' well-being both benefitted from specialisation; equity was only beneficial for mothers' well-being. Overall, couples might be advised to adopt highly equitable and specialised arrangements to promote both parents' well-being.

Do I want more if you help me? The impact of grandparental involvement on men’s and women’s fertility intentions

Grandparental support is positively associated with women’s labor force participation and fertility transitions. Specifically, grandparental support shapes adult child’s entry into parenthood by influencing adult child’s expectations about future care. In this framework, the current study investigates whether observed grandparental support impacts adult sons’ and adult daughters’ fertility intentions in a lowest-low fertility country such as Spain. We use data from the new wave of the Spanish Fertility Survey (2018), and we find that receiving grandparental support has a positive and significant impact on women’s but not on men’s fertility intentions. Furthermore, this impact remains positive after controlling for women’s socio-economic characteristics. Finally, education results the main mediator for the relationship between grandparental support and women’s fertility intentions, with highly educated women displaying a significantly increase of their fertility intentions compared to their low-educated counterparts. Our findings highlight gender differences in the perceived role of grandparental support for future fertility, and the importance of informal care for balancing family and work in the Spanish context.

The association of marital status with cognitive function and the role of gender in Chinese community-dwelling older adults: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Evidence of the association between marital status and cognitive function in Chinese older adults is limited.

AIMS

To examine the relationship between marital status and cognitive function and to explore the role of gender amongst older adults from three Chinese communities.

METHODS

A total of 1376 participants aged 60 years or over were included in this cross-sectional study. Cognitive function was assessed using the Chinese version of the mini-mental state examination (MMSE). Marital status and other variables were collected using a standardized questionnaire. Multiple linear regression models were used to examine associations between marital statuses and cognitive function amongst the target population. The moderating role of gender in these potential associations has also been explored.

RESULTS

In univariate linear regression models, compared to being married, both being widowed (β [95% CI]: -1.46[-2.78 to - 0.13]) and being single (β [95% CI]: - 4.88[-6.43 to - 3.38]) were associated with lower MMSE scores. After adjustment for confounding factors, the significant association of being widowed with MMSE scores disappeared (β [95% CI: - 0.08[- 1.04 to 0.86]), but the association of being single with MMSE scores still existed (β [95% CI]: - 1.87[- 3.17 to - 0.58]). Furthermore, the association of being single with MMSE scores was statistically significant in men (β [95% CI]: - 5.25[- 7.17 to - 3.33]) but not in women (β [95% CI: 0.88[- 0.87 to 2.64]).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Being single was associated with poorer cognitive function compared with their married counterparts in older Chinese men but not in women. More preventive measurements should be implemented for single men to reduce or delay cognitive decline. This is particularly important in the context of an aging population in China.

The Long-Term Costs of Family Trajectories: Women's Later-Life Employment and Earnings Across Europe

The “motherhood earnings penalty” is a well-established finding in many Western countries. However, a divide between mothers and nonmothers might oversimplify reality given that the family life course has diversified over the last decades. In addition, whether family choices have consequences for women’s employment and earnings in later life is not well known, particularly in a comparative perspective. Using data on 50- to 59-year-old women from the Generations and Gender Programme, the British Household Panel Survey, and SHARELIFE for 22 European countries, we derive a typology of women’s family trajectories and estimate its association with women’s later-life employment and earnings. Whereas family trajectory–related differences with regard to employment were relatively small, our findings reveal a clear, long-lasting family trajectory gradient in earnings. Childless women (with or without a partner) as well as single mothers had higher personal earnings than women whose family trajectories combined parenthood and partnership. Moreover, in societies in which reconciliation of work and family during midlife is less burdensome, labor market outcomes of women following different family trajectories converge. Our findings show that women’s fertility and partnership behavior are inevitably interrelated and jointly influence employment and earning patterns until later in life. The results imply that promoting equal employment opportunities could have long-lasting effects on women’s economic independence.

Changes in Couples' Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

The growing economic similarity of spouses has contributed to rising income inequality across households. Explanations have typically centered on assortative mating, but recent work has argued that changes in women's employment and spouses' division of paid work have played a more important role. We expand this work to consider the critical turning point of parenthood in shaping couples' division of employment and earnings. Drawing on three U.S. nationally representative surveys, we examine the role of parenthood in spouses' earnings correlations between 1968 and 2015. We examine the extent to which changes in spouses' earnings correlations are due to (1) changes upon entry into marriage (assortative mating), (2) changes between marriage and parenthood, (3) changes following parenthood, and (4) changes in women's employment. Our findings show that increases in the correlation between spouses' earnings prior to 1990 came largely from changes between marriage and first birth, but increases after 1990 came almost entirely from changes following parenthood. In both instances, changes in women's employment are key to increasing earnings correlations. Changes in assortative mating played little role in either period. An assessment of the aggregate-level implications points to the growing significance of earnings similarity after parenthood for rising income inequality across families.

Does the Impact of Motherhood on Women's Employment and Wages Differ for Women Who Plan Their Transition Into Motherhood?

Women's ability to control their fertility through contraception and abortion has been shown to contribute to improvements in education and employment. At the same time, their employment and wages decline substantially when they transition to motherhood. About one-third of births are unintended, and it is unknown whether the impact of motherhood on employment, hours, and wages is smaller for women who planned their transition into motherhood compared with those who did not. To explore this, we examine fixed-effects models that estimate labor market outcomes using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979-2014. We estimate models for Black and White women and find that the relationship between motherhood and employment is significantly more negative among White women who plan their transition into motherhood than among those who have an unplanned first birth. Among those who remain employed, we find that those with a planned first birth work fewer hours and have lower wages relative to those with unplanned births. We do not find significant evidence that the association between motherhood and labor market outcomes differs by fertility planning among Black women. Prior research shows how women's choices are structurally constrained by sociocultural norms and expectations and by a labor market that may not readily accommodate motherhood. In this context, our findings may reflect differences in women's motherhood and employment preferences and their ability to act on those preferences. Our analysis also makes a novel contribution to the large body of research that associates unplanned births with negative outcomes.

Marital loss and risk of dementia: Do race and gender matter?

Recent studies have found that marital loss through divorce or widowhood is associated with a higher risk of dementia for older adults. However, whether these associations vary by race and gender is less clear. To address this gap, we drew upon longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2016) to investigate the association between marital loss and dementia risk, separately for non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks. We further examined gender variations in the link between marital loss and dementia risk within each racial group. Results from discrete-time event history models suggested that widowhood is significantly associated with a higher risk of dementia for both Whites and Blacks, controlling for basic demographic characteristics. However, while divorce is significantly associated with a higher risk of dementia for Blacks, the association is marginally significant (p < 0.1) for Whites. There are few significant gender variations in these associations except for the effect of divorce among Whites. Even after controlling for economic and health-related factors, we found that divorce is associated with a higher risk of dementia among White men but not among White women. Economic resources explain a significant portion of the association between widowhood and dementia risk, more so for Whites than for Blacks. Our findings call for more research into the pathways through which marital loss shapes the risk of dementia across racial and ethnic groups.

Couples' changing work patterns in the United Kingdom and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

Going beyond a focus on individual‐level employment outcomes, we investigate couples' changing work patterns in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Analyzing longitudinal panels of 2186 couples from the Understanding Society COVID‐19 Survey (UK) and 2718 couples from the Current Population Survey (US), we assess whether the pandemic has elevated the importance of human capital vis‐à‐vis traditional gender specialization in shaping couples' work patterns. The UK witnessed a notable increase in sole‐worker families with the better‐educated partner working, irrespective of gender. The impact of the pandemic was similar but weaker in the US. In both countries, couples at the bottom 25% of the prepandemic family income distribution experienced the greatest increase in neither partner working but the least growth in sole‐worker arrangements. Through a couple‐level analysis of changing employment patterns, this study highlights the importance of human capital in shaping couples' paid‐work organization during the pandemic, and it reveals the socioeconomic gradient in such organization.

Health shocks and couples' labor market participation: A turning point or stuck in the trajectory?

A health shock can have lasting consequences for the employment of not only the individuals experiencing it, but also their spouses. In this article, we complement the individual approach to the impact of health shocks with a dyadic perspective and show how employment opportunities and restrictions within couples are interdependent in the face of severe illness. We investigate whether the association between male spouses' health shocks and couples' employment trajectories depends on household specialization and both spouses' education. Multichannel sequence analysis is applied to retrospective life-course data from the Survey for Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for couples with health shocks and their matched controls (N = 1022). By identifying typical employment trajectories, we find that health shocks are negatively associated with trajectories where both spouses continue in full-time employment and positively with trajectories where the man retires while the woman continues working and where both spouses retire simultaneously. Couples' trajectories differ according to the spouses' combined education levels. Findings suggest that health shocks may exacerbate economic inequalities within and between couples.

A Good Age to Marry? An Intergenerational Model of the Influence of Timing Attitudes on Entrance into Marriage

Do timing attitudes-subjective evaluations of particular ages as good ages to marry-influence entrance into marriage? To address this question, we formulated an intergenerational model of how parents' and children's timing attitudes influence children's marriage behavior. We theorized that both parents' and children's timing attitudes influence expectations of when children will marry. In turn, both parents' and children's marital expectations would influence children's actual entrance into marriage. We tested the model using intergenerational panel data from Nepal collected in 2008-2014. Timing attitudes of young people and their parents did influence expectations, as well as entrance into marriage. Young people's own attitudes were more influential than their parents' attitudes in determining children's expectations, but not behavior. Further, while the influence of parents was relatively even, mothers appear slightly more influential than fathers.

The confidence gap predicts the gender pay gap among STEM graduates

Is there a gender pay gap among graduates in some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields? Women and men have near-identical human capital at college exit, but cultural beliefs about men as more fit for STEM professions than women may lead to self-beliefs that affect pay. We hypothesized that women and men would be paid differently upon college exit, and that gender gaps in self-beliefs about one's abilities, or self-efficacy, would correspond to this difference. Using data from a three-wave longitudinal study of graduates of engineering programs from 2015–2017, we find a confidence gap that aligns with a gender pay gap. Overall, these findings point to the role that cultural beliefs play in creating gender disparities among STEM degree-holders.

Women make less than men in some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. While explanations for this gender pay gap vary, they have tended to focus on differences that arise for women and men after they have worked for a period of time. In this study we argue that the gender pay gap begins when women and men with earned degrees enter the workforce. Further, we contend the gender pay gap may arise due to cultural beliefs about the appropriateness of women and men for STEM professions that shape individuals’ self-beliefs in the form of self-efficacy. Using a three-wave NSF-funded longitudinal survey of 559 engineering and computer science students that graduated from over two dozen institutions in the United States between 2015 and 2017, we find women earn less than men, net of human capital factors like engineering degree and grade point average, and that the influence of gender on starting salaries is associated with self-efficacy. We find no support for a competing hypothesis that the importance placed on pay explains the pay gap; there is no gender difference in reported importance placed on pay. We also find no support for the idea that women earn less because they place more importance on workplace culture; women do value workplace culture more, but those who hold such values earn more rather than less. Overall, the results suggest that addressing cultural beliefs as manifested in self-beliefs—that is, the confidence gap—commands attention to reduce the gender pay gap.

What Factors Explain the Decline in Widowed Women's Poverty?

Historically, women in widowhood in the United States have been vulnerable, with high rates of poverty. However, over the past several decades, their poverty rate has fallen considerably. In this article, we look at why this decline occurred and whether it will continue. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to Social Security administrative earnings and benefit records, we address these questions by exploring three factors that could have contributed to this decline: (1) women's rising levels of education; (2) their increased attachment to the labor force; and (3) increasing marital selection, reflecting that whereas marriage used to be equally distributed, it is becoming less common among those with lower socioeconomic status. The project decomposes the share of the decline in poverty into contributions by each of these factors and also projects the role of these factors in the future. The results indicate that increases in education and work experience have driven most of the decline in widows' poverty to date, but that marital selection will likely play a large role in a continuing decline in the future. Still, even after these effects play out, poverty among widows will remain well above that of married women.

The motherhood wage penalty: A meta-analysis

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This 'motherhood wage gap' has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.6-3.8%. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers' human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers' choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.

Mind the "Happiness" Gap: The Relationship Between Cohabitation, Marriage, and Subjective Well-being in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Norway

Many studies have found that married people have higher subjective well-being than those who are not married. Yet the increase in cohabitation raises questions as to whether only marriage has beneficial effects. In this study, we examine differences in subjective well-being between cohabiting and married men and women in midlife, comparing the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Norway. We apply propensity score–weighted regression analyses to examine selection processes into marriage and differential treatment bias. We find no differences between cohabitation and marriage for men in the United Kingdom and Norway, and women in Germany. However, we do find significant differences for men in Australia and women in Norway. The differences disappear after we control for selection in Australia, but they unexpectedly persist for Norwegian women, disappearing only when we account for relationship satisfaction. For German men and British and Australian women, those with a lower propensity to marry would benefit from marriage. Controls eliminate differences for German men, although not for U.K. women, but relationship satisfaction reduces differences. Overall, our study indicates that especially after selection and relationship satisfaction are taken into account, differences between marriage and cohabitation disappear in all countries. Marriage does not lead to higher subjective well-being; instead, cohabitation is a symptom of economic and emotional strain.

Partnered women's contribution to household labor income: Persistent inequalities among couples and their determinants

This paper explores earnings inequalities within dual-earner couples in East and West Germany drawing on household-level panel data from 1992 to 2016. It has three aims: (1) to analyze how the partner pay gap (the pay gap between partners within one household) has developed over time, given institutional change, and whether the extent of inequality and temporal development vary between East and West Germany; (2) to explore variation in the partner pay gap by male partners' absolute earnings; and (3) to investigate the micro-level determinants of earnings inequalities within couples and determine whether their relevance varies between East and West Germany as well as by male partners' absolute earnings. We find women earn substantially less than their partners, and our regression results find no indication of a declining partner pay gap. Besides substantial variation between East and West Germany, our results also reveal important group-specific variation in the extent of the partner pay gap as well as in its determinants.

Does widowhood affect cognitive function among Chinese older adults?

There is growing evidence from Western countries that widowhood may affect cognitive health in later life. However, little is known about whether widowhood is associated with cognitive health in Eastern Asian countries such as China and what factors may explain the association between widowhood and cognitive health. We add to this line of research by investigating the effect of widowhood on 2-year change in cognitive function among Chinese adults ages 55 and older from 2011 to 2013, using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Cognitive function was measured by episodic memory and mental intactness (i.e., attention and time orientation). Our results showed that Chinese older adults who were continually widowed at both waves had significantly lower episodic memory scores at Wave 2 than their continually married counterparts, controlling for episodic memory at Wave 1, age, gender, education, and other sociodemographic variables. This suggests that the continually widowed experienced greater decline in episodic memory than the continually married over the 2-year period. After further controlling for economic resources, health, and social engagement, the difference in memory decline between the continually widowed and the continually married barely changed. The effect of widowhood on memory decline was similar for men and women. However, the continually widowed were not significantly different from the continually married in the decline of mental intactness. In addition, newly widowed adults were not significantly different from the continually married in the change of episodic memory and mental intactness. We conclude that staying widowed for 2 years or more may be an independent risk factor for episodic memory decline in China. More research is needed to investigate the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying the association between widowhood and memory decline.

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Sexual Exclusivity: Unpacking the Effect of Marriage

Sexual concurrency, or having temporally overlapping sexual partnerships, has important consequences for relationship quality and individual health, as well as the health and wellbeing of others embedded in larger sexual networks. Although married and cohabiting couples have similar, almost universal expectations of sexual exclusivity, the former report significantly lower rates of engaging in sexual concurrency than the latter. Given this difference in behavior occurs despite similar expectations of sexual fidelity, sexual exclusivity can provide an important test of whether marriage has a causal effect on relationship behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, I estimate an instrumental variable model testing whether observed differences in sexual concurrency between marital and cohabiting relationships are attributable to marriage itself via a recent implementation of the special regressor method, an estimator for binary choice models with endogenous regressors. I find evidence that, relative to cohabitation, marriage reduces the likelihood that an individual will engage in concurrent sexual relationships. Finding an effect of marriage in a recent cohort of young adults suggests that, despite changes in marriage and cohabitation, marriage still influences individual behavior.

Trends in the Motherhood Wage Penalty and Fatherhood Wage Premium for Low, Middle, and High Earners

Many studies have shown that women pay a wage penalty for motherhood, whereas men earn a wage premium for fatherhood. A few recent studies have used quantile regression to explore differences in the penalties across the wage distribution. The current study builds on this research and explores trends in the parenthood penalties and premiums from 1980 to 2014 for those at the bottom, middle, and top of the wage distribution. Analyses of data from the Current Population Survey show that the motherhood wage penalty decreased, whereas the fatherhood wage premium increased. Unconditional quantile regression models reveal that low-, middle-, and high-earning women paid similar motherhood wage penalties in the 1980s. The motherhood wage penalty began to decrease in the 1990s, but more so for high-earning women than for low-earning women. By the early 2010s, the motherhood wage penalty for high-earning women was eliminated, whereas low-earning women continued to pay a penalty. The fatherhood wage premium began to increase in the late 1990s, although again, more so for high-earning men than for low-earning men. By the early 2010s, high-earning men received a much larger fatherhood wage premium than low- or middle-earning men.

The Economic Foundations of Cohabiting Couples' Union Transitions

In recent decades, cohabitation has become an increasingly important relationship context for U.S. adults and their children, a union status characterized by high levels of instability. To understand why some cohabiting couples marry but others separate, researchers have drawn on theories emphasizing the benefits of specialization, the persistence of the male breadwinner norm, low income as a source of stress and conflict, and rising economic standards associated with marriage (the marriage bar). Because of conflicting evidence and data constraints, however, important theoretical questions remain. This study uses survival analysis with prospective monthly data from nationally representative panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 1996-2013 to test alternative theories of how money and work affect whether cohabiting couples marry or separate. Analyses indicate that the economic foundations of cohabiting couples' union transitions do not lie in economic specialization or only men's ability to be good providers. Instead, results for marriage support marriage bar theory: adjusting for couples' absolute earnings, increases in wealth and couples' earnings relative to a standard associated with marriage strongly predict marriage. For dissolution, couples with higher and more equal earnings are significantly less likely to separate. Findings demonstrate that within-couple earnings equality promotes stability, and between-couple inequalities in economic resources are critical in producing inequalities in couples' relationship outcomes.

Motherhood Penalties and Living Arrangements in China

Past research on the "motherhood wage penalty" has all been based on data from nuclear families, leaving open the possibility that the motherhood wage penalty may be lower or even absent in multi-generational families. In this paper, the wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is examined in both nuclear and multi-generational families in the context of contemporary China, which has a long tradition of patriarchal families. Using 1993-2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey data, the magnitude and variation of motherhood penalty is explored with fixed effects models among 1,058 women. It is found that each additional child lowers hourly wages by about 12 percent. In addition, the results show that the motherhood penalty is largest for women living with husband's parents, smaller for women not living with parents, and nil for women living with their own parents.

The Educational Consequences of Adolescent Childbearing and Union Formation in Brazil

While Brazil has high rates of adolescent fertility for its below-replacement total fertility rate, we know little about the causal effects of adolescent childbearing and adolescent union formation for women's education. In this paper, we examine unique data from the 2013 School-to-Work Transitions Survey to address the consequences of adolescent childbearing and adolescent union formation on educational outcomes of Brazilian young women. We apply several analytical strategies to address the endogeneity between adolescent childbearing and educational outcomes. Our findings suggest that childbearing during the teenage years is detrimental to the educational attainment of Brazilian women, and that educational disadvantages persist once we take into account mother's selection into adolescent childbearing. The penalty for adolescent mothers ranges from -1.66 to -1.80 fewer years of schooling and from 41 to 35 percent difference in the probabilities of graduating from high school. Additional findings show that marital unions among adolescent mothers have a compounding role at further hindering women's educational progress. Combined, our findings suggest that young mothers, particularly those in a marital union, face additional layers of disadvantages, demonstrating that early family formation is a meaningful stratifier for women in an already highly-stratified society.

The Double Disadvantage Reconsidered: Gender, Immigration, Marital Status, and Global Labor Force Participation in the 21st Century

Although women's representation among international migrants in many countries has risen over the last 100 years, we know far less about gender gaps in the labor force participation of immigrants across a wide span of host societies. Prior studies have established that immigrant women are doubly disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. These studies suggest an intriguing question: Are there gender gaps in immigrant labor force participation across destinations countries? In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the double disadvantage exists for immigrant women in a variety of host countries. We also examine how marriage moderates this double disadvantage. For the U.S., although we find that immigrant women have had the lowest labor force participation rates compared to natives and immigrant men since 1960, marital status is an important stratifying attribute that helps explain nativity differences. Extending the analysis to eight other countries reveals strong gender differences in labor force participation and shows how marriage differentiates immigrant women's labor force entry more so than men's.

New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium

Recent research has shown that men's wages rise more rapidly than expected prior to marriage, but interpretations diverge on whether this indicates selection or a causal effect of anticipating marriage. We seek to adjudicate this debate by bringing together literatures on (1) the male marriage wage premium; (2) selection into marriage based on men's economic circumstances; and (3) the transition to adulthood, during which both union formation and unusually rapid improvements in work outcomes often occur. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we evaluate these perspectives. We show that wage declines predate rather than follow divorce, indicating no evidence that staying married benefits men's wages. We find that older grooms experience no unusual wage patterns at marriage, suggesting that the observed marriage premium may simply reflect co-occurrence with the transition to adulthood for younger grooms. We show that men entering shotgun marriages experience similar premarital wage gains as other grooms, casting doubt on the claim that anticipation of marriage drives wage increases. We conclude that the observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying when their wages are already rising more rapidly than expected and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages.

Gender, Parental Status, and the Wage Premium in Finance

Previous research documents a growing wage premium for elite financial workers since the 1980s. A second line of research finds substantial gender disparities in earnings and career mobility among elite financial workers. Yet little is known about whether women in finance still receive a wage premium compared with their nonfinance counterparts. In addition, few studies examine whether similar gender disparities exist among nonelite financial workers. This article examines how the wage premium for working in the financial sector varies by gender and parental status across the wage distribution. We report that women earn a greater wage premium than men in low-wage financial jobs, while almost all of the increase in wages in high finance is captured by elite men, particularly fathers. Consequently, the financial sector simultaneously exacerbates and mitigates gender inequalities at different locations of the labor market. Our findings highlight the significance of institutional context in amplifying and attenuating the reward and penalty associated with gender and parental status.

The Marriage Wealth Premium Revisited: Gender Disparities and Within-Individual Changes in Personal Wealth in Germany

This study examines the association between marriage and economic wealth of women and men. Going beyond previous research that focused on household wealth, I examine personal wealth, which allows identifying gender disparities in the association between marriage and wealth. Using unique data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (2002, 2007, and 2012), I apply random-effects and fixed-effects regression models to test my expectations. I find that both women and men experience substantial marriage wealth premiums not only in household wealth but also in personal wealth. However, I do not find consistent evidence for gender disparities in these general marriage premiums. Additional analyses indicate, however, that women's marriage premiums are substantially lower than men's premiums in older cohorts and when only nonhousing wealth is considered. Overall, this study provides new evidence that women and men gain unequally in their wealth attainment through marriage.

'Motherhood penalty' and 'fatherhood premium'? Fertility effects on parents in China

BACKGROUND

Many previous empirical findings on 'motherhood penalty' and 'fatherhood premium' remain inconclusive due to potential selection biases. China's regional variation in exemptions to the one-child policy enables us to use the gender of the first child as a powerful instrumental variable (IV) in identifying the gendered fertility effects.

OBJECTIVE

We aim to estimate the causal effects of fertility on fathers' and mothers' various outcomes in China.

METHODS

Using the IV approach, this paper examines the gender-specific fertility effects on parents' time use, income, and subjective well-being, using data for 2010 from the China Family Panel Studies.

RESULTS

Results show that while fathers spend more time at work and less time taking care of family members with more children, mothers report better subjective well-being. Moreover, fathers gain self-confidence in both their careers and the future, and mothers are happier, more satisfied with life and report better social ability.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings do not directly support the gendered fertility effects on parents. However, the differential fertility effects on specific domains for mothers versus fathers are consistent with household specialisation. By interpreting this conclusion within the context of China's one-child family planning policy, our research suggests that parents would do better if the one-child policy were abolished - i.e., if parents were allowed to have more children.

Tethered lives: A couple-based perspective on the consequences of parenthood for time use, occupation, and wages

Prior research on parenthood effects has typically used single-sex models and estimated average effects. By contrast, we estimate population-level variability in partners' changes in housework hours, paid work hours, occupation traits, and wages after becoming parents, and we explore whether one partner's adjustment offsets or supplements the other's. We find tradeoffs between spouses on paid work adjustments to parenthood, but complementarity in adjustments to housework hours, occupation traits, and wages. The effect of parenthood on wives' behaviors is larger and more variable than on husbands' behaviors in every domain. The modest variation between husbands in work responses to parenthood explains little of the variation in the motherhood penalty, while variation in wives' own behaviors plays a larger role. We refer to this pattern as tethered autonomy: variation across American couples in work responses to parenthood is shaped primarily by variation in wives' adjustments, while husbands' work acts largely as a fixed point.

Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women's Economic and Social Status and Political Participation

The last fifty years of women's social and economic progress have been lauded as the "grand gender convergence," the "second demographic transition," and the "rise of women"-terms pointing to the remarkable transformation in women's social and economic roles since the 1960s. Many metrics document these changes.

Gender, Parenthood and Wage Differences: The Importance of Time-Consuming Job Characteristics

Using data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey (2000, 2010), we investigate how the gender wage gap varies with occupational prestige and family status and also examine the extent to which this gap is explained by time-consuming working conditions. In addition, we investigate whether there is an association between parenthood, job characteristics and wage (as differentiated by gender). The analyses indicate that there are gender differences regarding prestige-based pay-offs among parents that are partly explained by fathers' greater access to employment characterized by time-consuming conditions. Separate analyses for men and women demonstrate the presence of a marriage wage premium for both genders, although only men have a parenthood wage premium. This fatherhood premium is however only present in high-prestigious occupations. Compared with childless men, fathers are also more advantaged in terms of access to jobs with time-consuming working conditions, but the wage gap between fathers and childless men is not explained by differences in access to such working conditions.

Within-couple specialisation in paid work: A long-term pattern? A dual trajectory approach to linking lives

Research on the division of labour has mainly focussed on transitions between individuals' labour market states during the first years of parenthood. A common conclusion has been that couples specialize--women in unpaid and men in paid work--either due to gender ideologies or a comparative advantage in the labour market. But what happens later in life? The German Socio-Economic Panel now provides researchers with a continuous measure of working hours across decades of couples' lives, enabling a dual trajectory analysis to explore couples' long-term specialisation patterns. I focus on the career trajectories of West German couples, and specifically, due to the relatively low institutional and normative support for female employment during its members' early years, on the 1956-65 female birth cohort. Even in this setting and with a conservative estimate, a surprisingly small number of couples--only a fifth--adopt full specialisation in later life. A sizable proportion--a third--moves into dual full-time employment. This trend is even more common among highly educated couples: half of those couples move into dual full-time employment. I find that highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialise but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. But despite high opportunity costs, 45% of highly educated parents never try to pursue a dual career either because of a satiation of material wants or because of low societal support for maternal employment. The latter phenomenon is further underscored by the finding that many couples' increase in working hours occurs only when a youngest child is a teenager.

Diverging fortunes: The evolution of gender wage gaps for singles, couples, and parents in China, 1989–2009

Since the 1980s, social scientists working in China have raised questions about whether market transition could harm the relative position of women in the workplace. However, little work has been done to investigate this possibility with longitudinal data that includes both urban and rural populations and covers recent years, or linked gender gaps in income explicitly to the retreat of the State sector. Moreover, most research has not considered the real possibility that trends in gender disparities might diverge depending on the family status of women, though studies in China, as elsewhere, suggest the existence of both employment and wage penalties for motherhood. Guided by feminist theories which emphasize that gender inequality should be examined at the intersections of different social institutions, we consider whether gender wage gap trends differ for single people, compared to married people and parents. Further, given the role posited for market transition in shaping emerging gender gaps, we ask whether changes in gaps can be linked to the shift away from socialist institutions to privatized workplaces. We use multi-province panel data spanning the years 1989 to 2009 to estimate generalized estimating equation (GEE) models of earnings that account for multiple observations within the same individual and correct for potential bias associated with selection into the work force for women. The results show clear evidence of deterioration in income for women relative to men, and also suggest a link between the retreat of the State sector and a wider gender gap. However, the trend diverges by family status. Single women rival, and even outpace, single men in wages by the late 2000s, while mothers are increasingly disadvantaged in income.