Data and Code for: Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Patricia Cortes, Boston University; Jessica Pan, National University of Singapore

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
replication_files_JEL2022-1549			04/25/2022 11:18:PM

Project Citation:

Cortes, Patricia , and Pan, Jessica. Data and Code for: Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-12-05. https://doi.org/10.3886/E161401V1

Project Description

Summary: The past five decades have seen a remarkable convergence in the economic roles of men and women in society. Yet, persistently large gender gaps in terms of labor supply, earnings, and representation in top jobs remain. Moreover, in countries like the U.S., convergence in labor market outcomes appears to have slowed in recent decades. In this article, we focus on the role of children and show that many potential explanations for the remaining gender disparities in labor market outcomes are related to the fact that children impose significantly larger penalties on the career trajectories of women relative to men. In the U.S., we document that more than two-thirds of the overall gender earnings gap can be accounted for by the differential impacts of children on women and men. We propose a simple model of household decision-making to motivate the link between children and gender gaps in the labor market, and to help rationalize how various factors potentially interact with parenthood to produce differential outcomes by gender. We discuss several forces that might make the road to gender equity even more challenging for modern cohorts of parents, and offer a critical discussion of public policies that seek to address the remaining gaps.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Children; Gender Gaps; Inequality; Labor Market

JEL Classification:
      J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
      J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
      J18 Demographic Economics: Public Policy

Geographic Coverage: U.S.

Universe: Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)

Data Type(s): census/enumeration data

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-12-05]

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