Published:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020
Published in:NBER working paper series ; no. w27130
Extent:
1 Online-Ressource; illustrations (black and white)
Language:
English
DOI:
10.3386/w27130
Identifier:
Reproduction note:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Origination:
Footnote:
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files
Mode of access: World Wide Web
Description:
This paper investigates if the impact of children on the labor market outcomes of women relative to men -- child penalties -- can be explained by the biological links between mother and child. We estimate child penalties in biological and adoptive families using event studies around the arrival of children and almost forty years of adoption data from Denmark. Short-run child penalties are slightly larger for biological mothers than for adoptive mothers, but their long-run child penalties are virtually identical and precisely estimated. This suggests that biology is not a key driver of child-related gender gaps