Child Penalty & The Rise in Within-Couple Income Inequality with Carole Bonnet, Bertrand Garbinti and Pierre Pora
Abstract: Using a rich administrative dataset representative of the French population, we study the causal impact of the first childbirth on the within-couple inequality in France. We find that women’s contribution to total household income 5 years after the birth of their first child is 16% lower than what it would have been absent children. Both partners experience an income loss after childbirth, driven by a decline in working hours. However, the drop is much larger for women: 23% for women and 4% for men five years after childbirth. The drop in woman’s contribution to total household income after childbirth is more pronounced for women with a higher contribution to couple’s income before childbirth. This is both because the child penalty is higher for these women compared to others, and because their partners experience the largest increase in income following childbirth compared to other partners. Moreover, heterogeneous responses across couples reshape the entire distribution of withincouple inequality, notably through a sharp decline in the share of egalitarian couples, while the share of female-breadwinner couples slightly decreases but remains closed to its already low level.
Unconstrained Choices? Understanding the Post-Birth Decline in Working Hours of Highly Educated Mothers with Marion Brouard
Abstract: This paper investigates the respective roles of labor market constraints, childcare constraints, and maternal preferences in driving both the post-childbirth drop in mothers’ working hours and their limited responsiveness to family policies. We develop a labor supply model that incorporates preferences for maternal care and conduct a survey of 1,400 highly educated women. We find that a substantial share of the post-birth decline in hours worked reflects unconstrained choices, suggesting that the reduction in hours for this group is unlikely to be dropped by policies that solely target constraints. We show that while both labor market and childcare constraints shape mothers’ working hours, their effects are heterogeneous and, on average, offsetting, as constraints lead some women to work less than they would like, but others to work more. Consistent with the literature, we find that childcare subsidies have no net effect on hours worked, as heterogeneous constraint effects lead to varied positive and negative responses to the policy, which cancel each other out. Yet, these policies do effectively relax childcare constraints, thereby aligning actual drop in labor supply more closely with mothers’ preferences. Finally, we examine the role of social norms and beliefs and find that perceived returns to maternal care on child well-being significantly influence mothers’ preferences to stay at home.
Within-Couple Income Inequality Across First and Second Unions
Abstract: This paper investigates how income inequality within couples evolves from first to second unions. Specifically, using a decomposition of income ratios, it examines the roles of (i) labor market mechanisms and (ii) partner choice mechanisms in explaining these changes. Based on a French administrative panel dataset, I first document that women across all income deciles tend to increase their contribution to total household income in their second union relative to their first. Among men, the pattern differs: those in the lower part of the income distribution increase their contribution, while those in the upper deciles experience a decline. The primary driver of these changes appears to be labor market mechanisms, possibly related to individuals being more likely to re-partner with younger partners. Then, using a simple OLS regression, I provide suggestive evidence that mothers rely more heavily on the labor market mechanism to explain changes in their income contribution between unions. Finally, I find evidence of an aversion to women out-earning their partners in first unions, observed as a discontinuity at 0.5 in the distribution of women’s income shares. However, this discontinuity seems to disappear in second unions, suggesting that either social norms are less influential in second unions or that such norms become relevant only later in the relationship.