National Family Policies and Mothers’ Employment: How Earnings Inequality Shapes Policy Effects across and within Countries

Hook, Jennifer L.; Paek, Eunjeong

doi:10.1177/0003122420922505

Cited by 48 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 118 publications

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“…Outside the United States, these pol i cies include paren tal leave months reserved for fathers and work hour reg u la tions that limit over work (Gornick and Meyers 2003;Rege and Solli 2013). Policies such as uni ver sal paid paren tal leave or childcare could also help reduce inequal ity by supporting con ti nu ity in women's earn ings in lower-and mid dle-income house holds (Hook and Paek 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in Couples' Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

2021

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The growing economic similarity of spouses has contributed to rising income inequality across households. Explanations have typically centered on assortative mating, but recent work has argued that changes in women's employment and spouses' division of paid work have played a more important role. We expand this work to consider the critical turning point of parenthood in shaping couples' division of employment and earnings. Drawing on three U.S. nationally representative surveys, we examine the role of parenthood in spouses' earnings correlations between 1968 and 2015. We examine the extent to which changes in spouses' earnings correlations are due to (1) changes upon entry into marriage (assortative mating), (2) changes between marriage and parenthood, (3) changes following parenthood, and (4) changes in women's employment. Our findings show that increases in the correlation between spouses' earnings prior to 1990 came largely from changes between marriage and first birth, but increases after 1990 came almost entirely from changes following parenthood. In both instances, changes in women's employment are key to increasing earnings correlations. Changes in assortative mating played little role in either period. An assessment of the aggregate-level implications points to the growing significance of earnings similarity after parenthood for rising income inequality across families.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in Couples' Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

2021

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“…(4) WLFP shows the percent of women in employment in our analysis sample of women age 16 to 60 in heterosexual unions. We decided to calculate this measure using our sample instead of using widely available women’s employment rates because the latter does not effectively capture how women’s employment sensitivity to family status and life-course junctures systematically varies across countries (Boeckmann, Misra, and Budig 2015; Hook and Paek 2020; Musick, Bea, and Gonalons-Pons 2020). (5) GWG is the difference between men’s average wage and women’s average wage as percent of men’s average wage.…”

Section: Data Measures and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marriage and Masculinity: Male-Breadwinner Culture, Unemployment, and Separation Risk in 29 Countries

Goñalons-Pons

Gangl

2021

Am Sociol Rev

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Scholars argue that gender culture, understood as a set of beliefs, norms, and social expectations defining masculinities and femininities, plays an important role in shaping when romantic relationships end. However, the relevance of gender culture is often underappreciated, in part because its empirical identification remains elusive. This study leverages cross-country variation in gender norms to test the hypothesis that gender culture conditions which heterosexual romantic relationships end and when. We analyze the extent to which male-breadwinning norms determine the association between men’s unemployment and couple separation. Using harmonized household panel data for married and cohabiting heterosexual couples in 29 countries from 2004 to 2014, our results provide robust evidence that male-breadwinner norms are a key driver of the association between men’s unemployment and the risk of separation. The magnitude of this mechanism is sizeable; an increase of one standard deviation in male-breadwinner norms increases the odds of separation associated with men’s unemployment by 32 percent. Analyses also show that the importance of male-breadwinner norms is strongest among couples for whom the male-breadwinner identity is most salient, namely married couples. By directly measuring and leveraging variation in the key explanatory of interest, gender culture, our study offers novel and robust evidence reinforcing the importance of gender norms to understand when romantic relationships end.

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“…Across all social origin groups, men and women with professional degrees earn the highest salaries. In line with relative education theory (Horowitz, 2020), advanced degrees, being relatively rarer, do provide an advantage for everybody who earns them compared to more widespread types of degrees.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

Manzoni

2021

The Journal of Higher Education

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The literature has shown inconsistent support for the equalization thesis, that is, the idea that a college degree erases the effect of social origin on socioeconomic destination, and suggested higher intergenerational persistence among advanced degree holders compared to those with bachelor's degrees. The present study sheds light on the origin-destination link by investigating the intergenerational association between parents' education and offspring's earnings, paying attention to parents' education relative to their children's. Drawing on large samples and multiple waves of data from the National Survey of College Graduates, this study also makes an empirical contribution by analyzing intergenerational persistence across degree types. For women, I find highest intergenerational persistence at the bachelor level, but little evidence of intergenerational association for any advanced degrees. For men, results show intergenerational persistence across educational groups. Differences across respondents holding different types of degree support a theory of intergenerational relative education advantage, in which the effect of parents' education on offspring's attainment varies depending on offspring's education relative to their parents. Educational and labor market-related factors do not change the overall picture.

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National Family Policies and Mothers’ Employment: How Earnings Inequality Shapes Policy Effects across and within Countries

Cited by 48 publications

References 118 publications

Changes in Couples' Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

Changes in Couples' Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

Marriage and Masculinity: Male-Breadwinner Culture, Unemployment, and Separation Risk in 29 Countries

Equalizing or Stratifying? Intergenerational Persistence across College Degrees

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