 Gender norms and the child penalty in ChinaMingxue Zhang, Yue Wang and Lingling Hou Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024, vol. 221, issue C, 277-291 Abstract: We utilize a comprehensive individual panel dataset from China and employ an event study approach to investigate the influence of childbirth on gender disparities across various labor market outcomes, emphasizing the role of gender norms in shaping the child penalty. Our findings show a pronounced decline in individual earnings, labor force participation and working hours for women after childbirth, though labor force participation returns to pre-childbirth level in the long term. Such trends are not observed among men. These gender differentiated outcomes are driven by a key factor: gender norms, specifically women’s and their husbands’ views toward gender roles. Parents’ or in-laws’ views play a smaller role. Women suffer a larger child penalty in individual earnings if they or their spouses hold traditional views compared to those who, or whose spouses, hold more egalitarian views. Potential channels are that traditional views may predispose mothers to focus more on household activities and/or engage in informal jobs that are more flexible and family friendly. Keywords: Child penalty; Gender gap; Gender norms; Individual earnings; Labor market equality; Earnings differentials (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:221:y:2024:i:c:p:277-291 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.03.011 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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