Child Penalties in Politics

Jon Fiva and Max-Emil M King

The Economic Journal, 2024, vol. 134, issue 658, 648-670

Abstract: Women tend to experience a substantial decline in their labour income after their first child is born, while men do not. Do such ‘child penalties’ also exist in the political arena? Using comprehensive administrative data from Norway, we find that women are less likely than men to secure elected office after their first child is born. The effects already manifest from the nomination stage, where mothers receive less favourable rankings on party lists relative to comparable fathers. This paper broadens our understanding of a fundamental social issue in political representation and demonstrates how motherhood even affects positively selected women.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uead084 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Child Penalties in Politics (2022)
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:oup:econjl:v:134:y:2024:i:658:p:648-670.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().