Assortative Mating and Heterogeneity in the Magnitude of the Child Penalty

Lara Lebedinski, University of Vienna
Nadia Nadia Steiber , University of Vienna
Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, Department of Economics, University of Linz

This paper contributes to the literature on how the within-couple gender earnings gap evolves upon entry into parenthood. We take a couple-perspective and investigate the implications of assortative mating, and in particular of hypogamy in couples—where the woman is higher educated than the man—on child penalties. The available evidence on child effect heterogeneity on the gender earnings gap is mixed. Kleven et al. (2019, 2021) report homogeneous effects regardless of the mother’s education and of females’ relative earnings potential prior to parenthood. Two studies find smaller child penalties for hypogamic than educationally homogamous couples in Sweden (Angelov et al., 2016) and the Netherlands (Artmann et al., 2022). In this study, we draw on Austrian register data on half a million first births. First, we apply the Kleven event study design that exploits the sharp change in earnings after childbirth for mothers relative to fathers for a causal estimate of the child penalty. Second, we adapt the Kleven approach, using information on the female share of the couples’ joint earnings as the dependent variable in the event study design (Musick et al. 2000). Third, we develop a flexible model to study child effect heterogeneity across 14 educational pairings. We estimate a ’Kleven child penalty’ of 42% (percentage by which women fall behind men 10 years after childbirth). Using a couple-level approach, we find substantial effect heterogeneity, i.e. larger penalties than average for some types of hypogamic couples but smaller ones for other types of hypogamic couples.

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 Presented in Session 86. Partner Selection