The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood

Glaubitz, Rick; Harnack-Eber, Astrid; Wetter, Miriam

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4071416

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Differences between mothers and other Nordic women as well as mothers of one and two children, were also predicted to be smaller than in other studied countries. A recent study on Germany estimated an overall gender gap of accumulated lifetime earnings exceeding 50 %, and a larger gap among those with more children (Glaubitz, Harnack-Eber, and Wetter 2022). Previous studies from the US suggest an overall gap of approximately 40 % in earnings accumulated by midlife (de Castro Galvao 2022), and a larger gap among persons with lower levels of education (Kim, Tamborini, and Sakamoto 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Countries

Nisén¹,

Erlandsson²,

Jalovaara³

2023

Preprint

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Nordic countries are considered advanced in gender equality, but also in these countries women still take longer family leaves and have lower earnings than men. This study provides novel insight by assessing the differences in accumulated earnings by midlife associated with childbearing among women and men in Finland and Sweden. We place particular attention to the magnitude of gender gaps in accumulated earnings across groups. We hypothesize larger gender gaps among those with a larger number of children, among those with a lower level of education, and overall, in Finland. The study is based on full-population register data, with highly accurate measures of earnings across decades. Our results indicate that women born in 1974–1975 accumulated on average 32 % and 29 % less labor earnings than men by age 44 in Finland and Sweden, respectively. Childbearing strongly modifies the gender gap especially in Finland, and the highly educated have moderately smaller gaps in both countries.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Countries

Nisén¹,

Erlandsson²,

Jalovaara³

2023

Preprint

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“…Greselin, Jędrzejczak, and Trzcińska (2023) proposed a new parametric approach to gender gap analysis based on different theoretical distributions, and it was applied to EU-SILC data for Poland and Italy. Various dimensions of the discrepancy between men and women have recently been considered in the literature for many countries (e.g., Doorley and Claire 2020;Avram and Popova 2022;Boneva et al 2022;Cordova, Grabka, and Sierminska 2022;Glaubitz, Harnack-Eber, and Wetter 2022;and Cozarenco and Szafarz 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Gender Gap in the Visegrád Group Countries Based on the Luxembourg Income Study

Jędrzejczak,

Trzcińska

2023

CER

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Gender equality is a fundamental human right and one of the core values of the European Union (EU). Great efforts have been made to defend this right and to promote gender equality within the member states and around the world. However, there are still significant differences between men and women, especially in terms of income. The main objective of the paper is to compare income distributions for gender groups across four Central European countries, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary, i.e., the members of the Visegrád Group (V4). These countries share similar histories and similar economic development, but there are substantial differences between their approaches to economic reforms, including labour market policy. This, in turn, is reflected in different income distributions and income inequality patterns. There is a debated research issue regarding the methodology of measuring the gender gap – the traditional methods based on comparing means and medians seem unsatisfactory as they do not consider the shape of income distributions. The paper’s novelty lies in the application of the relative distribution concept, which goes beyond the typical focus on average income differences toward a full comparison of the entire distribution of women’s earnings relative to men’s. In the paper, we implement a parametric approach for estimating the relative distribution, which allows us to compare and visualise the “gap” between the gender groups at each distribution quantile. The basis for the calculations was the microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The statistical methods applied in the study were appropriate to describe the gender gap over the entire income range. The results of the empirical analysis helped to reveal similarities and substantial differences between the countries.

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Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Welfare States

Nisén,

Erlandsson,

Jalovaara

2024

J Fam Econ Iss

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The Nordic welfare states are considered advanced in terms of gender equality, but even in these countries women still take longer family leave and have lower earnings than men. This study provides new insights by assessing the differences in accumulated midlife earnings associated with childbearing between women and men in Finland and Sweden. We pay particular attention to the size of the gender gap in accumulated earnings across groups. We hypothesize that the gender gap will be larger among those with a larger number of children, among those with a lower level of education, and overall in Finland. The study is based on complete population register data, with highly accurate measures of earnings over decades. Our results show that by the age of 44, women born in 1974–1975 in Finland and Sweden had earned on average 32% and 29% less than men, respectively. Childbearing strongly modifies the gender gap, especially in Finland, and the highly educated have moderately smaller gaps in both countries. Our results show that, even the Nordic welfare states, despite their strong policy emphasis on gender equality and their success in achieving high levels of female labor force participation, are far from closing the gender gap in earnings accumulated over the first half of the life course. Our results also suggest that governments seeking to achieve gender equality should be cautious about providing long family-related leave with flat-rate compensation.

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The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood

Cited by 3 publications

References 51 publications

Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Countries

Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Countries

The Gender Gap in the Visegrád Group Countries Based on the Luxembourg Income Study

Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Welfare States

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