Gender norms and the child penalty
evidence from the Dutch bible belt
Additional information
Authors
Rellstab S.
Type
Journal Article
Year
2023
Language
English
Abstract
There are substantial gender gaps in earnings once children are born in many developed countries, despite similar education levels of men and women and accessible childcare facilities. I examine whether gender norms are a driver of women’s higher labour market costs of having children using Dutch administrative data. Exploiting large local variation in gender norms in the Netherlands, I compare parents from the Dutch bible belt, where gender norms are on average less egalitarian, with parents from other regions in the Netherlands, where gender norms are more egalitarian. My findings show that having children leads an about 30% larger earnings decrease for women in the bible belt, mainly driven by a larger reduction in working hours. I rule out that differences in pre-child parental characteristics and institutions such as childcare availability explain this result and argue that different gender norms in these two areas likely explain this finding.
Keywords
Child penalty , Parenthood , Gender norms, Division of labour in the household
Journal
Applied economics
Volume
56
Number ( Month )
45
Pages (or article number)
5428–5441
Diffusion
License
CC BY-NC-ND
Visibility
Public
Status open access
Hybrid
