Can having children explain the gender wage gap?
In a new ISF report Inés Hardoy and Pål Schøne discusses the relationship between wage, gender and having small children. The results from their analyses indicate that women earn less than men, and that children are an important explanation.
Men have higher hourly wages than women. In their report Hardoy and Schøne focus on the importance of having children in explaining this gender wage gap. The results show that children are important: in Norway approximately 40 per cent of the wage gap between full-time working men and women aged 20-45 years in the private sector is explained by children. The child penalty is much higher in the private sector than in the public sector. However, women with children seem to catch up women without children as time goes by. This suggests that the family gap is a transitory phenomenon. Finally, correcting the measure of potential work experience with a measure that resembles true work experience, the family gap is reduced considerably. This result suggests that a large part of the gap between men and women resulting from having children is due to loss of human capital during periods out of the labour market.
Inés Hardoy
Pål Schøne
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