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Parental duties, labor market behavior, and single fatherhood in America

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Abstract

Longitudinal analysis using samples from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics suggests that men’s income and wages decrease after entering into single fatherhood by marital separation. This loss exceeds what can be explained by marital separation alone. Using a difference in difference approach, I estimate that single fatherhood suppresses men’s annual income by more than $8,000 per year, putting these men and their children at increased economic risk. Similar labor market changes are experienced by widower fathers, a subset of exogenous single fathers. The apparent effects show persistence after single fathers remarry, but mostly diminish after children mature and leave the household. These results stand at odds with previous research suggesting that fatherhood increases men’s wages and hours, and that male labor market outcomes are not significantly influenced by housework.

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Notes

  1. With “single father” defined as unmarried men reporting own children in the household.

  2. Populations of single mothers and fathers estimated using 2010 census data accessed via IPUMS-USA Ruggles et al. 2010

  3. As in Angrist and Evans 1998

  4. e.g. Lundberg and Rose 2002

  5. e.g. Hersch and Stratton (1997)

  6. “Custodial father” is a term specific to their paper, meaning that a child lives in the home but at least one of the child’s parents lives elsewhere.

  7. The focal group of this paper is men with children living outside their household.

  8. This sample excludes only fathers living in blended or multi-generational families which they do not head e.g. fathers living in households headed by their own father.

  9. Questions on housework in previous years use either different wording, ask annual not weekly hours, or are available only in intervals (as opposed to continuous hours) making them less comparable to data beginning in 1976.

  10. Information on housework hours is not available for 1982, so all observations from this year will be excluded from specifications including housework.

  11. Totals reported by father type are total men ever observed in given group. Men may appear in multiple groups across the panel e.g. a married man with children whom then becomes divorced but retains custody would be observed as both a “married father” and a “separated father” in different years.

  12. All Labor and Personal Income data used throughout the paper are inflation adjusted to base year 2010.

  13. Annual housework hours are calculated as 52x weekly housework hours reported. This is done to facilitate comparison with labor hours which are reported as annual.

  14. Personal Income is estimated as family income minus the sum of wife’s wages, wife’s business income, as well as the taxable income and transfers received by other family members.

  15. There are fewer individuals in this table than in those above due to the additional restriction that men must have a valid survey exactly two years before first observed with marital separation.

  16. i.e. 92.5% of men observed with children under 15 before spousal death have children under 17 in the household in the first year observed as a widower. Looking only at the annual samples and using one-year transitions this number rises to 96.5%

  17. Results shown are from unweighted regressions, estimating effect on individuals sampled after first marriage. In all estimates, similar results (available upon request) are found using longitudinal family weights.

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  1. Department of Economics and Geosciences, United States Air Force Academy, Air Force Academy, CO, 80840, USA

    Aaron Albert

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  1. Aaron Albert
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Correspondence to Aaron Albert.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Albert, A. Parental duties, labor market behavior, and single fatherhood in America. Rev Econ Household 16, 1063–1083 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-018-9419-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-018-9419-z

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