Can the child penalty be reduced?. Evaluating multiple policy interventions

Martin Andresen and Emily Nix

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: Children cause large earnings drops for mothers but not fathers, a stylized fact known as the “child penalty” that explains a substantial portion of remaining gender income gaps. Can policy reduce the child penalty? We first document how changes in the child penalty over a long time horizon in Norway correlate with major family policy reforms. Next, we evaluate two possible interventions: paternity leave and high-quality childcare. We find no impact of paternity leave on child penalties or a measure of father’s preferences for childcare. In contrast, a year of publicly provided childcare reduces child penalties by 23% during the years of use. These results suggest governments can act to reduce child penalties, but providing alternatives to the mother’s time, such as quality childcare, is more effective than paternity leave.

Keywords: Gender wage gap; child penalty; paternity leave; childcare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J22 J23 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ssb.no/befolkning/barn-familier-og-hus ... 069ec5/DP983_web.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ssb:dispap:983

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.ssb.no/b ... eduseres-av-politikk

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department P.O.Box 8131 Dep, N-0033 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by L Maasø ().