Publications / Articles / 2008 / 2008:002 Hvor mye betyr barn for lønnsforskjeller mellom kvinner og menn?
Hvor mye betyr barn for lønnsforskjeller mellom kvinner og menn?
It is well documented in existing research on wage differences that men receive a higher hourly rate of pay than women, and of various explanations suggested for this gender gap is that of differences related to child care. Theaim of this article is to further explore the significance of children in explaining gender differences in hourly wage rates in Norway. Our analyses suggest that children account for almost 40 per cent of the difference in the rates of pay between full-time employed women of 20 to 45 years of age and men. The main reason for this gap is that, for women, children are negatively related to wages, i.e. women with children receive lower wages than women without children. For men, the pattern is the opposite. Another key question is whether, with time, women with children catch up in terms of wages, and the results indicate that this is the case: the wage gap diminishes over the working life span. Finally, we conduct an analysis to correct for possible specification bias arising from not taking into account the fact that women havelonger periods out of the labour market than men in relation to parental leave and child care. Our findings show that when we correct for this, the negative relation between children and hourlywages is considerably reduced, suggesting that a substantial proportion of the wage gap arising from having children can be linked to the mother’s reduction in human capital, such as loss of work experience, while on parental leave.