 Household specialization and the child penalty in the NetherlandsElisabeth Artmann, Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw Labour Economics, 2022, vol. 78, issue C Abstract: Women in the Netherlands face an earnings penalty of 47% after the birth of their first child, which is in line with previous studies. We construct several measures of relative within-household earnings potential to assess the importance of household specialization based on comparative advantage. The Netherlands offers a particularly interesting setting for studying household specialization since employees basically face no restrictions if they want to reduce their working hours. We find that women with a higher earnings capacity than their partner face lower earnings losses after childbirth and reduce their labor supply less than women with a low relative earnings potential. Yet, men’s labor market trajectories are largely unaffected by parenthood irrespective of their relative earnings potential in the household. There is thus no evidence that households divide market work and child care based on comparative advantage or bargaining power. We provide some evidence that women with high earnings potential rely more on formal child care. Keywords: Child penalty; Household specialization; Earnings potential; Event study; Labor supply; Gender wage gap (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:labeco:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s0927537122001117 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102221 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.