Motherhood Wage Penalty in the External and Internal Labor Market

• In Event: 451 - Regular Session. It’s All About the Money: Gender Pay Disparity

Abstract

This study uses data of NLSY79 1979 - 2010 (women = 5698; year-women = 53787) to investigate how motherhood wage penalty changes by different job mobility pathway. Research result shows that comparing with transferring position in firm (staying in the internal labor market), changing employer (leaving firm and entering the external labor market) brings greater wage penalty for mothers. Furthermore, the motherhood wage penalty gap between stayer and leaver differs across women’s earning level. Low-wage mothers benefited by staying in firms in the first few employment years but suffer from larger wage penalty than the leaving mothers in their middle and late employment. On the contrary, staying in firm penalizes high-wage mothers in the first few years but benefits them in the middle and late employment stage. I argue that the different work requests, employment environments and employment dynamics shape the various associations between motherhood wage penalty and job mobility pathway across earning level.

Author

• Ting-Wen Hsu, University of Florida