Measuring the child penalty early in a career. The role of education for different cohorts

Stephen Bazen, Xavier Joutard and Hélène Périvier ()
Additional contact information
Hélène Périvier: OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: There is a large literature on the existence of a child penalty on labour incomes for mothers after the birth of a child, whereas there is little discernible effect on fathers'incomes. Some studies even find that fathers benefit from a premium. Using an event study approach, we measure the penalty due to the birth of a first child for cohorts of young adults after leaving the educational system in France. We measure the child penalty in terms of monthly earnings, the employment rate, working hours, hourly earnings, and other labour market outcomes. We assess the role plaid the level of education for different cohorts leaving fulltime education in 1998, 2004 and 2010. We find evidence of a significant child penalty for mothers: 22% in monthly earnings overall, rising to 37% for those with secondary education level. For the 2010 cohort, we observe the same level of absolute child penalties for mothers, whereas relatively to fathers, the penalty has narrowed. This is mainly due to a decrease in monthly earnings, and more precisely in employment rate of fathers before and after the birth of the child in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.

Date: 2025-01-23
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04913789v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04913789v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring the child penalty early in a career. The role of education for different cohorts (2025)
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:hal:spmain:hal-04913789

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().