Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families

Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais and Jakob Søgaard

No 27130, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: J13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
Note: CH EH LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Henrik Kleven & Camille Landais & Jakob Egholt Søgaard, 2021. "Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families," American Economic Review: Insights, vol 3(2), pages 183-198.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27130.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2021)
Working Paper: Does biology drive child penalties? Evidence from biological and adoptive families (2021)
Working Paper: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2020)
Working Paper: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27130

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27130

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().