Gender norms and the child penalty
evidence from the Dutch bible belt
Informazioni aggiuntive
Autori
Rellstab S.
Tipo
Articolo pubblicato in rivista scientifica
Anno
2023
Lingua
Inglese
Sommario
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.
Parole chiave
Child penalty , Parenthood , Gender norms, Division of labour in the household
Periodico
Applied economics
Volume
56
Numero ( Mese )
45
Pagine (o numero dell’articolo)
5428–5441
Diffusione
Licenza
CC BY-NC-ND
Visibilità
Pubblico
Status open access
Hybrid
