This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. ASSA Annual Meeting
  3. 2021
  4. Preliminary Program
  5. Gender Equality and Parenting from the Baby Boom to COVID-19
« Back to Results

Gender Equality and Parenting from the Baby Boom to COVID-19

Paper Session

Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)

Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: Alessandra Maria Voena, University of Chicago

Parenting in Science: Lessons from the Baby Boom

Scott Kim
,
University of Pennsylvania
Petra Moser
,
New York University

Abstract

How do children affect scientific output, promotions, and gender inequality in science? We investigate this question by analyzing 82,094 biographies – matched with patents and publications – in 1956, at the height of the baby boom. Examining life cycle patterns of productivity, we find that mothers’ productivity peaks in their early 40s, long after other scientists have started to decline. Event studies of marriage show that mothers become more productive 15 years after marriage, when children are in their teens. Differences in the timing of productivity have important implications for tenure. Just 27% of mothers who are academics achieve tenure, compared with 48% of fathers and 46% of other women. Examining selection, we find that women are half as likely to survive in science, but more likely to hold a PhD, and much less likely to marry and have children compared with men. Output data show that mothers who survive in science are extremely positively selected. Employment data indicate that a generation of women was lost to American science during the baby boom.

Female Labor Force Participation and Intergenerational Mobility

Claudia Olivetti
,
Dartmouth College
Jorgen Modalsli
,
Oslo Business School
Daniele Pasermann
,
Boston University
Laura Salisbury
,
York University

Abstract

Married women's labor force participation in Norway rose from 9 percent in 1960 to 79 percent in 2011. What are the implications of this major shift in women’s labor supply across generations for socioeconomic mobility? Using administrative data on the universe of the Norwegian population, we document and investigate trends in intergenerational elasticities for men and women born between 1960 and 1985, at both the individual and family level. These cohorts, especially those born between 1960 and the mid-1970s, are likely to have grown up with a stay-at-home mother, but to be in a two-earner household as adults. We develop a framework that helps us understand how women’s labor supply maps into typical measures of intergenerational mobility for men and women, individuals and families, and how human capital, material welfare and marital sorting processes interact. We show that, under plausible parameterizations, increased labor supply of mothers will tend to lower the intergenerational elasticity coefficient. Preliminary analysis suggests that, in cross sectional data, mother labor supply and intergenerational mobility are positively related.

This Time It's Different: The Role of Women's Employment in a Pandemic Recession

Matthias Doepke
,
Northwestern University
Titan Alon
,
University of California-San Diego
Jane Olmstead-Rumsey
,
Northwestern University
Michèle Tertilt
,
University of Mannheim

Abstract

In recent US recessions, employment losses have been much larger for men than for women. Yet, in the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic the opposite is true: women's employment declined much more than men's. Why does a pandemic recession have a disproportionate impact on women's employment, and what are the wider repercussions of this phenomenon? We argue that more women lost jobs because their employment is concentrated in contact-intensive sectors such as restaurants and because increased childcare needs during school and daycare closures prevented many from working. We analyze the macroeconomic implications of women's employment losses using a model that features heterogeneity in gender, marital status, childcare needs, and human capital. A pandemic recession is qualitatively different from a regular recession because women's labor supply behaves differently than men's. Specifically, our quantitative analysis shows that a pandemic recession features a stronger transmission from employment to aggregate demand and results in a persistent widening of the gender wage gap. Many of the negative repercussions of a pandemic recession can be averted by prioritizing opening schools and daycare centers during the recovery.
JEL Classifications
  • J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
  • N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy