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  4. December 2023
  5. Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market

Journal of Economic Literature

ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)

Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market

  • Patricia Cortés
  • Jessica Pan
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 61, no. 4, December 2023
(pp. 1359–1409)
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Abstract

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 United States, 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. We document that, in the United States, 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.

Citation

Cortés, Patricia, and Jessica Pan. 2023. "Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market." Journal of Economic Literature, 61 (4): 1359–1409. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20221549

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
  • J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J71 Labor Discrimination