Research

"Fatherhood Premium over Lifetime: A Structural Decomposition" (Job Market Paper)

This paper explores the source of wage premium fathers earn relative to childless men. I develop a household job search model with endogenous selection into parenthood to quantitatively assess how job turnover, human capital dynamics, and the decision to become a parent shape fatherhood premium over the life cycle. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), I estimate the model and use it to decompose the sources of fatherhood premium into two key components: selection channel and treatment effect of parenthood. The findings show that the contribution of treatment effect increases over lifetime, accounting for 44.29 percent of the lifetime fatherhood premium, while the contribution of selection channel is 55.71 percent although it decreases over lifetime. I use the model to evaluate the impact of policies that provide earned income tax credits for working mothers on household labor market outcomes.