Motherhood and the Gender Productivity Gap

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gallen, Yana
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvad064
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 1055-1096
• 关键词: inequality evidence; earnings gap; LABOR; COMPETITION; wages; selection; DYNAMICS; DISCRIMINATION; performance; INVESTMENT

摘要

Using Danish matched employer-employee data, I compare the relative pay of men and women to their relative productivity as measured by production function estimation. I find that the gender productivity gap is 8%, implying that almost two thirds of the residual gender wage gap is due to productivity differences between men and women. Motherhood plays an important role, yet it also reveals a puzzle: The pay gap for mothers is entirely explained by productivity, whereas the gap for non-mothers is not. In addition, the decoupling of pay and productivity for women without children happens during their prime-child bearing years. These estimates are robust to a variety of specifications for the impact of observables on productivity, and robust to accounting for endogenous sorting of women into less productive firms using a control-function approach. This paper also provides estimates of the productivity gap across industries and occupations, finding the same general patterns for mothers compared to women without children within these subgroups.