Trends over time in his and her earnings following parenthood in Sweden
Anna-Karin Nylin
Kelly Musick
Sunnee Billingsley
Ann-Zofie Duvander
Marie Evertsson
10.17045/sthlmuni.7654835.v1
https://su.figshare.com/articles/preprint/Trends_over_time_in_his_and_her_earnings_following_parenthood_in_Sweden/7654835
<b>Abstract:</b> This study brings a couple perspective to assess change and
variation in gender equality over time in a setting with high maternal labor
force participation, a long history of family policy investment, and strong
norms of gender equality. Using fixed effects methods and Swedish register data
covering the total population of couples becoming parents between 1987 and
2007, we investigate how trajectories of within-couple earnings inequality
around the time of a first birth have changed over time and varied by couples’
relative educational levels. Our descriptive findings indicate that the
immediate loss in women’s share of couples’ earnings after the first child has
lessened over time, but this change virtually disappears in our fixed effect
models. Among couples in which women have tertiary education, we find a small
decrease in couples’ income inequality that holds with the introduction of
fixed effects and time-varying controls. This appears to be driven by a decline
in men’s labor income in the most recent cohorts, consistent with an increase
in childcare among men. We find no corresponding increase in women’s labor
income, however, which leads us to question the idea that men’s increased
childcare necessarily facilitates an increase in women’s labor market
investment.
2019-01-31 10:07:08
earnings trajectories
parenthood
gender equality
‘Stockholm Reports in Demography’
Sociologiska institutionen
Department of Sociology
SUDA
Stockholm University Demography Unit
Stockholms universitets demografiska avdelning
Demography not elsewhere classified
Sociology