Calendrier du 08 mars 2016
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 08/03/2016 de 12:30 à 13:30
Campus jourdan,Bâtiment G, Rez de chaussée, Salle 8
LAVEST Chloé (CAE)
Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark
écrit avec Henrik Jacobsen Kleven, London School of Economics and Jakob Egholt Søgaard, University of Copenhagen
Despite considerable gender convergence over time, substantial gender inequality persists
in all countries. Using Danish administrative data from 1980-2011, we show that most of the
remaining gender inequality can be attributed to the dynamic effects of having children. The
arrival of children leads to a long-run penalty in female earnings of 21% driven in roughly
equal proportions by labor force participation, hours of work, and wage rates. Underlying
this child penalty, we find clear dynamic effects of child birth on occupation, promotion to
manager, and the family friendliness of the firm for women relative to men. The fraction of
aggregate gender inequality that can be explained by children is strongly increasing over time—
from 30% in 1980 to 80% in 2011—showing that non-child reasons for gender inequality have
largely disappeared. Conditional on rich observables, the female child penalty in earnings is
increasing in the relative skill of the female in the family, suggesting that mechanisms other than
comparative advantage are at play. We probe into the potential role of “gender identity” effects
by showing that the female child penalty is strongly related to the relative labor supply history
of her parents. This is consistent with the notion that gender attitudes surrounding family and
career are shaped in part by the environment in which individuals grow up.