Revisiting Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households: A Cautionary Tale on the Potential Pitfalls of Density Estimators

Daniel Kühnle (), Michael Oberfichtner and Kerstin Ostermann
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Daniel Kühnle: University of Duisburg-Essen
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Daniel Kuehnle ()

No 14293, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We show that Bertrand et al.'s (QJE 2015) finding of a sharp drop in the relative income distribution within married couples at the point where wives start to earn more than their husbands is unstable across different estimation procedures and varies across contexts. We apply the estimators by McCrary (JoE, 2008, McC) and Cattaneo et al. (JASA, 2020, CJM) to administrative data from the US and Germany and compare their performance in a simulation. Large bins cause McC to substantially overreject the null hypothesis, and mass points close to the potential discontinuity affect McC more than CJM.

Keywords: US; density estimation; relative income distribution; gender norms; Germany; replication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C18 D10 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2021, 36 (7), 1065-1073.

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Journal Article: Revisiting gender identity and relative income within households: A cautionary tale on the potential pitfalls of density estimators (2021)
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