![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
Motherhood reduces women’s wages. But does the size of this penalty differ between more and less advantaged women? To answer this, we use unconditional quantile regression models with person-fixed effects, and panel data from the 1979 to 2010 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). We find that among white women, the most privileged—women with high skills and high wages—experience the highest total penalties, estimated to include effects mediated through lost experience. Although highly skilled, highly paid women have fairly continuous experience, their high returns to experience make even the small amounts of time some of them take out of employment for childrearing costly. By contrast, penalties net of experience, which may represent employer discrimination or effects of motherhood on job performance, are not distinctive for highly skilled women with high wages.
References
|
Acker, Joan . 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender & Society 4(2):139–58. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Allison, Paul D. 2005. Fixed-Effects Regression Models Using SAS. Cary, NC: SAS Institute. Google Scholar | |
|
Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina, Kimmel, Jean. 2005. “The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay.” Review of Economics of the Household 3(1):17–48. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Anderson, Deborah J., Binder, Melissa, Krause, Kate. 2002. “The Motherhood Penalty: Which Mothers Pay and Why?” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 92(2):354–58. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Anderson, Deborah J., Binder, Melissa, Krause, Kate. 2003. “The Motherhood Wage Penalty Revisited: Experience, Heterogeneity, Work Effort, and Work-Schedule Flexibility.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 56(2):273–94. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Avellar, Sarah, Smock, Pamela J. 2003. “Has the Price of Motherhood Declined over Time? A Cross-Cohort Comparison of the Motherhood Wage Penalty.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 65(3):597–607. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Azmat, Ghazala, Ferrer, Rosa. Forthcoming. “Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers.” Journal of Political Economy. Google Scholar | |
|
Baker, Michael, Milligan, Kevin. 2008. “How Does Job-Protected Maternity Leave Affect Mother’s Employment.” Journal of Labor Economic 26(4):655–91. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Becker, Gary . 1985. “Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor.” Journal of Labor Economics 3(1):S33–S58. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Becker, Gary . 1993. A Treatise on the Family, Expanded Version. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Bittman, Michael, England, Paula, Sayer, Liana, Folbre, Nancy, Matheson, George. 2003. “When Does Gender Trump Money? Bargaining and Time in Household Work.” American Journal of Sociology 109(1):186–214. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Blau, Francine, Kahn, Lawrence. 2007. “Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980–2000.” Journal of Labor Economics 25(3):393–438. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Buchmann, Claudia, McDaniel, Anne. 2016. “Motherhood and the Wages of Women in Professional Occupations.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(4):128–50. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Budig, Michelle, England, Paula. 2001. “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood.” American Sociological Review 66(2):204–225. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Budig, Michelle, Hodges, Melissa. 2010. “Differences in Disadvantage: How the Wage Penalty for Motherhood Varies across Women’s Earnings Distribution.” American Sociological Review 75(5):705–728. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Budig, Michelle, Hodges, Melissa. 2014. “Statistical Models and Empirical Evidence for Differences in the Motherhood Penalty across the Earnings Distribution: A Reply to Killewald and Bearak.” American Sociological Review 79(2):358–64. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Byker, Tanya . 2016. “The Opt-Out Continuation: Education, Work and Motherhood from 1984 to 2008.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(4):34–70. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Cha, Youngjoo, Weeden, Kim A. 2014. “Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages.” American Sociological Review 79(3):457–84. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Correll, Shelley, Benard, Stephen, Paik, In. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” American Journal of Sociology 112(5):1297–1338. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Doeringer, Peter, Piore, Michael J. 1971. Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Adjustment. New York: D.C. Heath and Company. Google Scholar | |
|
Edwards, Richard C., Reich, Michael, Gordon, David, eds. 1975. Labor Market Segmentation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Google Scholar | |
|
England, Paula . 2005. “Emerging Theories of Care Work.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:381–99. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
England, Paula, Christopher, Karen, Reid, Lori L. 1999. “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Wages.” Pp. 139–82 in Latinas and African American Women at Work: Race, Gender, and Economic Inequality, edited by Browne, I. New York: Russell Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
England, Paula, Garcia-Beaulieu, Carmen, Ross, Mary. 2004. “Women’s Employment among Blacks, Whites, and Three Groups of Latinas: Do More Privileged Women Have Higher Employment?” Gender & Society 18(4):494–509. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
England, Paula, Gornick, Janet, Shafer, Emily. 2012. “How Women’s Employment and the Gender Earnings Gap Vary by Education in Seventeen Countries.” Monthly Labor Review April:20–29. Google Scholar | Medline | |
|
Farkas, George, England, Paula, Vicknair, Keven, Kilbourne, Barbara Stanek. 1997. “Cognitive Skill, Skill Demands of Jobs, and Earnings among Young European-American, African-American, and Mexican-American Workers.” Social Forces 75(3):913–38. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Firpo, Sergio, Fortin, Nicole M., Lemieux, Thomas. 2009. “Unconditional Quantile Regressions.” Econometrica 77(3):953–73. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Gallen, Yana. 2015. “The Gender Productivity Gap.” Unpublished Job Market Paper, Economics Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Google Scholar | |
|
Gangl, Markus, Ziefle, Andrea. 2009. “Motherhood, Labor Force Behavior, and Women’s Careers: An Empirical Assessment of the Wage Penalty for Motherhood in Britain, Germany, and the United States.” Demography 46(2):341–69. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Glass, Jennifer . 2004. “Blessing or Curse? Work-Family Policies and Mothers’ Wage Growth Over Time.” Work and Occupations 31(3):367–94. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Glauber, Rebecca . 2007. “Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 69(4):951–61. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Glauber, Rebecca . 2013. “Shifting Inequalities: Trends in the Motherhood Wage Penalty for Married, Unmarried, White, and African American Women, 1980–2010.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, New York. Google Scholar | |
|
Goldin, Claudia . 2014. “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter.” American Economic Review 104(4):1091–1119. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Hao, Lingxin, Naiman, Daniel Q. 2007. Quantile Regression. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Herr, Jane Leber, Wolfram, Catherine D. 2012. “Work Environment and Opt-Out Rates at Motherhood across High-Education Career Paths.” Industrial & Labor Relations Review 65(4):928–50. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Hill, Martha S. 1979. “Wage Effects of Marital Status and Children.” Journal of Human Resources 14(4):579–94. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Killewald, Alexandra, Bearak, Jonathan. 2014. “Is the Motherhood Penalty Larger for Low-Wage Women? A Comment on Quantile Regression.” American Sociological Review 79(2):350–57. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Killewald, Alexandra, Gough, Margaret. 2013. “Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?” American Sociological Review 78(3):477–502. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Koenker, Roger . 2005. Quantile Regression. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Koenker, Roger, Bassett, Gilbert. 1978. “Regression Quantiles.” Econometrica 46(1):33–50. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Korenman, Sanders, Neumark, David. 1992. “Marriage, Motherhood and Wages.” Journal of Human Resources 27(2):233–55. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Loughran, David S., Zissimopoulos, Julie M. 2009. “Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wages of Men and Women.” Journal of Human Resources 44(2):326–349. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Miller, Amalia R. 2011. “The Effect of Motherhood Timing on Career Path.” Journal of Population Economics 24(3):1071–1100. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Neal, Derek A., Johnson, William R. 1996. “The Role of Premarket Factors in Black-White Wage Differences.” Journal of Political Economy 104(5):869–95. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Pal, Ipshita, Waldfogel, Jane. 2016. “The Family Gap in Pay: New Evidence for 1993 to 2013.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(4):104–127. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Rodgers, William M., Spriggs, William E. 1996. “What Does the AFQT Really Measure: Race, Wages, Schooling and the AFQT Score.” Review of Black Political Economy 24(4):13–46. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Staff, Jeremy, Mortimer, Jeylan T. 2012. “Explaining the Motherhood Wage Penalty during the Early Occupational Career.” Demography 49(1):1–21. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Taniguchi, Hiromi . 1999. “The Timing of Childbearing and Women’s Wages.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61(4):1008–19. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Tolbert, Charles M., Horan, Patrick M., Beck, Elwood M. 1980. “The Structure of Economic Segmentation: A Dual Economy Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 85(5):1095–1116. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Waldfogel, Jane . 1997. “The Effect of Children on Women’s Wages.” American Sociological Review 62(2):209–217. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Waldfogel, Jane . 1998. “Understanding the Family Gap in Pay for Women with Children.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1):137–56. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Wilde, Elizabeth Ty, Batchelder, Lily, Ellwood, David T. 2010. “The Mommy Track Divides: The Impact of Childbearing on Wages of Women of Differing Skill Levels.” NBER Working Paper 16582. Google Scholar | |
|
Williams, Joan C. 2004. “Hitting the Maternal Wall.” Academe 90(6):16–20. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Williams, Joan C., Bornstein, Stephanie. 2008. “The Evolution of ‘FReD’: Family Responsibilities Discrimination and Developments in the Law of Stereotyping and Implicit Bias.” Hastings Law Journal 59:1311–58. Google Scholar | |
|
Winship, Christopher, Radbill, Larry. 1994. “Sampling Weights and Regression.” Sociological Methods & Research 23(2):230–57. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals |
