Are All of the Good Men Fathers? The Effect of Having Children on Earnings

Astrid Kunze

No 8113, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study reconsiders the empirical question of whether men's earnings increase because of children. Large Norwegian register data are used for brother and twin pairs who are followed over their life cycle from their first entry into the labour market. The data permit family-fixed effects to be modeled in various ways, as well as observing earnings growth before and after having children. The simple conditional correlation between children and earnings is positive. When only variation from between-sibling differences is used, the earnings effect post entry into first-fatherhood declines. The effect becomes small and non-significant when we use twins.

Keywords: twins; siblings; children; earnings; men (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 J22 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - revised version published as 'The effect of children on male earnings and inequality' in: Review of Economics of the Household, 18, 683 - 710, 2020

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Working Paper: Are all of the good men fathers? The effect of having children on earnings (2014)
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