Good Housekeeping
Trends in the Developmental Gradient in Mothers’ Parenting Time by Maternal Education, 2003–2019
Melody Ge Gao
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Educational disparities in mothers’ parenting time have implications for socioeconomic inequality in children's resources and later life attainment. The reproduction of inequality could be more consequential if educational disparities are most pronounced at child ages when a specific parenting need is more developmentally important. Following recent findings suggesting a general reduction in the educational gradient in mothers’ overall parenting time, this study aims to determine if this convergence extends to the developmental gradient in parenting. Using the American Time Use Survey from 2003 to 2019 (N = 34,232), this study finds that educational disparities in mothers’ parenting time have narrowed in accordance with the developmental gradient. Economic, cultural, and demographic changes that might contribute to the narrowing trends are discussed. These findings offer an updated understanding of educational gaps in maternal parenting strategies, with potential impacts on the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage.
Winning the Bread and Baking it Too: Gendered Frictions in the Allocation of Home Production
Kyle Hancock, Jeanne Lafortune & Corinne Low
NBER Working Paper, January 2025
Abstract:
We document that female breadwinners do more home production than their male partners, driven by “housework” like cooking and cleaning. By comparing to same sex couples, we highlight that specialization within heterosexual households does not appear to be “gender neutral” even after accounting for average earnings differences. One possible explanation would be a large comparative advantage in housework by women, a supposition commonly used to match aggregate labor supply statistics. Using a model, we show that while comparative advantage can match some stylized facts about how couples divide housework, it fails to match others, particularly that men’s housework time is inelastic to relative household wages. Matching these facts requires some gendered wedge between the opportunity cost of housework time and its assignment within the household. We then turn to the implications for household formation. Gendered rigidities in the allocation of household tasks result in lower surplus for couples where women out-earn men than vice versa, providing a micro-founded reason for substantial literature showing that lower relative earning by men decreases marriage rates. We show that our mechanism -- allocation of housework, rather than norms about earnings -- plays a role by relating marriage rates to the ratio of home production time in US immigrants’ countries of origin.
Engendering equality: Unraveling the influence of family cues on young men's attitudes toward women's rights
Sara Morell, Lauren Hahn & Mara Ostfeld
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains the gender gap in support for the protection and advancement of women's rights? We argue that because boys receive less and more delayed information outside the home about gender inequality than girls, the cues boys receive inside the home play an outsized role in their adult attitudes about women's rights. Using a large national survey, we demonstrate that men's attitudes toward women's rights are, in fact, more heavily influenced by the perceived attitudinal norms within their family than are women's. Through a follow-up survey experiment with a national sample of U.S. teenagers, we explore this further and illustrate that one-time statements from a single family member shift support for women's rights among young men, but not young women. Importantly, statements from other authority figures do not impact attitudes. Our findings highlight the gendered manner in which familial socialization shapes the gendered attitudes that frame women's lives.
Can Early Intervention Reduce Future Child Maltreatment?
Anna Aizer & Emilia Brito Rebolledo
NBER Working Paper, January 2025
Abstract:
Children with a disability are 3.5 times more likely to be maltreated. Federal Early Intervention (EI) serves 426,000 children 0-3 with a disability, 3.7% of the entire population under three. EI’s objective is to support families in caring for their children’s special needs. Compared to children evaluated but ineligible for EI, children receiving EI in the first year of life are 3.3 percentage points less likely to be maltreated later in life, a decline of 45%, with smaller effects for those receiving services later. Targeting at-risk children, intervening early, and engaging with families in a cooperative manner effectively reduces future maltreatment.
The payroll tax contribution limit and women's labor market outcomes
Manuel Schechtl & Andreas Haupt
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Background: Employees only pay payroll taxes up to a specific limit, which results in a comparatively greater increase in the take-home pay of individuals who earn labor incomes above this threshold. We argue that returns from payroll-exempt labor are gendered: That is, because men are more likely high earners than women, they will more often benefit from the payroll tax ceiling. This increases the labor market returns of men and sets substantial incentives within couples to reduce the paid labor of the secondary earner.
Method: We use panel data from the United States (PSID) to examine changes in women's annual work hours, hourly wages, and earnings over the partner's entry into payroll tax-exempt labor (treatment) using fixed-effect models with individual slopes. The models enable us to assess women's labor market outcomes while adjusting for heterogeneous within-couple earnings differential slopes before treatment in addition to any time-constant heterogeneity. Our sample contains 7297 women providing 65,811 observations.
Results: Women's earnings on average diminished by 4% after the partner breaks through the payroll tax contribution threshold. This was mostly explained by changes in annual work hours, which on average decreased by 4%. We did not find reduced hourly wages in the short run.