The Effect of Parental Duration on Mother’s Wages in the United States

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 12: Economics in Families

Abstract

Recent research has shown that being a mother lowers women’s hourly earnings. The motherhood wage penalty is a major source of the gender pay gap, persisting across a woman’s life course. However, there have been few studies on whether the wage penalties for motherhood change throughout women’s lives. This study asks: (1) Does the motherhood penalty change across a woman’s life course? (2) Are there any substantial variations in the motherhood penalty among mothers distinguished by their education level and race? Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I investigated whether and how this wage penalty for motherhood changes across a woman’s life course. Overall, I found that the child penalty increases a few years after women’s first childbirth and peaks with having teenagers. Importantly, by the time mothers experience multiple years of parenting they no longer suffer a significant wage penalty. More specifically, I find that college-educated women have lower and statistically nonsignificant penalties compared with mothers without a college education. In terms of their number of children, mothers with three or more children also experience larger penalties. For black mothers, however, being a mother does not decrease their wages with years of parenting. These findings thus provide strong evidence that this negative association between motherhood and wages is greater among white than black women.

Author

• Misun Lim, WZB Berlin Social Science Center