Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Trends in the Motherhood Wage Penalty and Fatherhood Wage Premium for Low, Middle, and High Earners

Demography volume 55, pages 1663–1680 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Many studies have shown that women pay a wage penalty for motherhood, whereas men earn a wage premium for fatherhood. A few recent studies have used quantile regression to explore differences in the penalties across the wage distribution. The current study builds on this research and explores trends in the parenthood penalties and premiums from 1980 to 2014 for those at the bottom, middle, and top of the wage distribution. Analyses of data from the Current Population Survey show that the motherhood wage penalty decreased, whereas the fatherhood wage premium increased. Unconditional quantile regression models reveal that low-, middle-, and high-earning women paid similar motherhood wage penalties in the 1980s. The motherhood wage penalty began to decrease in the 1990s, but more so for high-earning women than for low-earning women. By the early 2010s, the motherhood wage penalty for high-earning women was eliminated, whereas low-earning women continued to pay a penalty. The fatherhood wage premium began to increase in the late 1990s, although again, more so for high-earning men than for low-earning men. By the early 2010s, high-earning men received a much larger fatherhood wage premium than low- or middle-earning men.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

References

  • Aisenbrey, S., Evertsson, M., & Grunow, D. (2009). Is there a career penalty for mothers’ time out? A comparison of Germany, Sweden and the United States. Social Forces, 88, 573–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, D. J., Binder, M., & Krause, K. (2002). The motherhood wage penalty: Which mothers pay it and why? American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 92, 354–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, D. J., Binder, M., & Krause, K. (2003). The motherhood wage penalty revisited: Experience, heterogeneity, work effort, and work-schedule flexibility. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 56, 273–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Autor, D. H., Katz, L. F., & Kearney, M. S. (2008). Trends in U.S. wage inequality: Revisioning the revisionists. Review of Economics and Statistics, 90, 300–323.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avellar, S., & Smock, P. J. (2003). Has the price of motherhood declined over time? A cross-cohort comparison of the motherhood wage penalty. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 597–607.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Azmat, G., & Ferrer, R. (2017). Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers. Journal of Political Economy, 125, 1306–1355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, M. J., & DiPrete, T. A. (2016). Five decades of remarkable but slowing change in U.S. women’s economic and social status and political participation. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(4), 1–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benard, S., & Correll, S. J. (2010). Normative discrimination and the motherhood wage penalty. Gender & Society, 24, 616–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blau, F. D. (1998). Trends in the well-being of American women, 1970–1995. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 112–165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blau, F. D., & Kahn, L. M. (2016). The gender wage gap: Extent, trends, and explanations (NBER Working Paper No. 21913). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

  • Boushey, H. (2008). “Opting out?” The effect of children on women's employment in the United States. Feminist Economics, 14(1), 1–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buchmann, C., & McDaniel, A. (2016). Motherhood and the wages of women in professional occupations. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(4), 128–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M. J., & England, P. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66, 204–225.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M. J., & Hodges, M. J. (2010). Differences in disadvantage: Variation in the motherhood wage penalty across white women’s earnings distribution. American Sociological Review, 75, 705–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M. J., & Hodges, M. J. (2014). Statistical models and empirical evidence for differences in the motherhood penalty across the earnings distribution. American Sociological Review, 79, 358–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M. J., Misra, J., & Boeckmann, I. (2012). The motherhood penalty in cross-national perspective: The importance of work–family policies and cultural attitudes. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 19, 163–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Card, D., & DiNardo, J. E. (2002). Skill-biased technological change and rising wage inequality: Some problems and puzzles. Journal of Labor Economics, 20, 733–783.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coltrane, S. (2004). Elite careers and family commitment: It’s (still) about gender. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596, 214–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooke, L. P. (2014). Gendered parenthood penalties and premiums across the earnings distribution in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. European Sociological Review, 30, 360–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Correll, S. J. (2004). Constraints into preferences: Gender, status, and emerging career aspirations. American Sociological Review, 69, 93–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Correll, S. J., Benard, S., & Paik, I. (2007). Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty? American Journal of Sociology, 112, 1297–1338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • England, P. (2010). The gender revolution: Uneven and stalled. Gender & Society, 24, 149–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • England, P., Bearak, J., Budig, M. J., & Hodges, M. J. (2016). Do highly paid, highly skilled women experience the largest motherhood penalty? American Sociological Review, 81, 1161–1189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Firpo, S., Fortin, N. M., & Lemieux, T. (2009). Unconditional quantile regressions. Econometrica, 77, 953–973.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gangl, M., & Ziefle, A. (2009). Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in Britain, Germany, and the United States. Demography, 46, 341–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glauber, R. (2008). Race and gender in families and at work: The fatherhood wage premium. Gender & Society, 22, 8–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldin, C. (2014). A grand gender convergence: Its last chapter. American Economic Review, 104, 1091–1119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-take-all politics: Public policy, political organization, and the precipitous rise of top incomes in the United States. Politics and Society, 38, 152–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heckman, J. J. (1979). Sample selection bias as a specification error. Econometrica, 47, 153–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodges, M. J., & Budig, M. J. (2010). Who gets the daddy bonus? Organizational hegemonic masculinity and the impact of fatherhood on earnings. Gender & Society, 24, 717–745.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iacus, S. M., King, G., & Porro, G. (2009). CEM: Software for coarsened exact matching. Journal of Statistical Software, 30. Retrieved from http://j.mp/2oSW6ty

  • Kalleberg, A. L. (2011). Good jobs, bad jobs: The rise of polarized and precarious employment systems in the United States, 1970s–2000s. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalleberg, A. L. (2012). Job quality and precarious work: Controversies, clarifications, and challenges. Work and Occupations, 39, 427–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killewald, A. (2013). A reconsideration of the fatherhood premium: Marriage, coresidence, biology, and fathers’ wages. American Sociological Review, 78, 96–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killewald, A., & Bearak, J. (2014). Is the motherhood penalty larger for low-wage women? A comment on quantile regression. American Sociological Review, 79, 350–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killewald, A., & García-Manglano, J. (2016). Tethered lives: A couple-based perspective on the consequences of parenthood for time use, occupation, and wages. Social Science Research, 60, 266–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killewald, A., & Gough, M. (2013). Does specialization explain marriage penalties and premiums? American Sociological Review, 78, 477–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, G., Nielsen, R., Coberley, C., Pope, J. E., & Wells, A. (2011). Comparative effectiveness of matching methods for causal inference. Unpublished manuscript, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

  • King, M., Ruggles, S., Alexander, J. T., Flood, S., Genadek, K., Schroeder, M. B., . . . Vick, R. (2010). Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 3.0. [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

  • Kmec, J. (2011). Are motherhood penalties and fatherhood bonuses warranted? Comparing pro-work behaviors and conditions of mothers, fathers, and non-parents. Social Science Research, 40, 444–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korenman, S., & Neumark, D. (1992). Marriage, motherhood, and wages. Journal of Human Resources, 27, 233–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lemieux, T. (2006). Increasing residual wage inequality: Composition effects, noisy data, or rising demand for skill? American Economic Review, 96, 461–498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lemieux, T. (2008). The changing nature of wage inequality. Journal of Population Economics, 21, 21–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCall, L., & Percheski, C. (2010). Income inequality: New trends and research directions. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 329–347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mouw, T., & Kalleberg, A. L. (2010). Occupations and the structure of wage inequality in the United States, 1980s to 2000s. American Sociological Review, 75, 402–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pal, I., & Waldfogel, J. (2016). The family gap in pay: New evidence for 1967 to 2013. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(4), 104–127.

  • Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2003). Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 1–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanchez, L., & Thomson, E. (1997). Becoming mothers and fathers: Parenthood, gender, and the division of labor. Gender & Society, 11, 747–772.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Staff, J., & Mortimer, J. T. (2012). Explaining the motherhood wage penalty during the early occupational career. Demography, 49, 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). (2016). Working mothers issue brief (Women’s Bureau issue brief). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor.

  • Waldfogel, J. (1997). The effect of children on women’s wages. American Sociological Review, 62, 209–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weeden, K. A., Cha, Y., & Bucca, M. (2016). Long work hours, part-time work, and trends in the gender gap in pay, the motherhood wage penalty, and the fatherhood wage premium. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(4), 71–102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Western, B., & Rosenfeld, J. (2011). Unions, norms, and the rise in U.S. wage inequality. American Sociological Review, 76, 513–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yu, W., & Kuo, J. C. (2017). The motherhood wage penalty by work conditions: How do occupational characteristics hinder or empower mothers? American Sociological Review, 82, 744–769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. A version of this article was presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the Population Association of America, San Diego, CA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824, USA

    Rebecca Glauber

Authors
  1. Rebecca Glauber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebecca Glauber.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(PDF 299 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Glauber, R. Trends in the Motherhood Wage Penalty and Fatherhood Wage Premium for Low, Middle, and High Earners. Demography 55, 1663–1680 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0712-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0712-5

Keywords

search

Navigation