Background info for family gap:

一战740

Over the past few decades, as the gap in pay between womenand men has been narrowing, the gap between women with children andthose without children has been widening. Why is this the case? One reason may bethe institutional structure in the United States, which has emphasized equal pay andequal opportunity policies, but not family policies such as maternity leaveand child care.

What Causes the Family Gap?

Differences in human capital are clearly very important inexplaining the family gap in pay. Consistent with the theoretical work ofBecker (1991), there is now a large body of evidence confirming that educationand work experience go a long way toward explaining the lower wages of women ingeneral However, a strong pay penalty for women having children persists evenafter one controls for differences in education, overall work experience, andfull-time and part-time work experience

What accounts for this remaining family penalty? Onehypothesis is that the family gap reflects unobserved heterogeneity. Forinstance, women with children might be less motivated or might bring lesseffort to the labor market The research to date has provided some support forthis hypothesis, but lower reported effort does not fully explain the lowerwages of women with children

A second hypothesis is that employers discriminate againstwomen with children. Historically, there is evidence of discrimination againstmarried women, but there has been little research on discrimination againstmothers. Thus, although there is no shortage of anecdotal accounts ofdiscrimination against women with children, direct evidence on this point islacking.

A third hypothesis focuses on institutional features of thelabor market. In recent work, I have emphasized the lack of access tojob-protected maternity leave as a structural barrier to the progress of womenwith children in employment settings that value work experience, job tenure,and a good match between employer and employee. This hypothesis is supported byresearch indicating that breaks in employment at childbirth have long-lastingeffects on women’s pay.

There is also evidence thatwomen who maintain employment continuity over childbirth have higher pay thanthose who do not. Similar results have been found in British data

There is also some evidence that rules concerning work hoursaffect women’s decisions about returning to work after childbirth. Thus,flexible hours policies and policies that allow women to work shorter hours (orat least to decline overtime) are of interest here as well. Of course,part-time or flexible work may bring its own pay penalties. However, there areboth good and bad parttime jobs, and those who work part-time voluntarily donot necessarily receive lower wages.

zhao87

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