Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families

Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais and Jakob Egholt Soegaard
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Henrik Kleven: Princeton University, NBER, CEPR, and CEBI
Jakob Egholt Soegaard: CEBI, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 20-15, CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)

Abstract: This paper investigates if the impact of children on the labor market trajectories of women relative to men child penalties can be explained by the biological links between mother and child. We estimate child penalties in biological and adoptive families using event studies around the arrival of children and almost forty years of adoption data from Denmark. Long-run child penalties in earnings and its underlying determinants are virtually identical in biological and adoptive families. This implies that biology is not important for child-related gender gaps. Based on additional analyses, we argue that our results speak against the importance of specialization based on comparative advantage more broadly.

Keywords: Gender Wage Gap; Children; Adoption; Denmark (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 J13 J16 J22 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2020-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gen, nep-lma and nep-ltv
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https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_WP_15-20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2021)
Working Paper: Does biology drive child penalties? Evidence from biological and adoptive families (2021)
Working Paper: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2020)
Working Paper: Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families (2020)
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