Graduation Year
2021
Date of Submission
11-2020
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
Reader 1
Jessamyn Schaller, Ph.D.
Terms of Use & License Information
Abstract
This paper seeks to establish the magnitude of the long-run motherhood wage penalty. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I examine the difference between the real hourly wages of mothers and non-mothers in the long run. By comparing mothers to not-yet-mothers as well as never-mothers, I am able to better isolate the true wage penalty mothers face. My findings indicate that 21 to 25 years after the birth of their first child, mothers face a 31.75 percentage point wage penalty compared to non-mothers. In addition, I examine differences in the wage penalties of mothers by marital status, educational attainment, and race. My results suggest that married women face a 7.16 percentage point greater wage penalty than single women 20 years after the birth of their first child. I also find that mothers with over 16 years of schooling face a penalty twice the size of mothers who completed 12 or fewer years of schooling. Finally, I find that white mothers face the largest motherhood wage penalty, followed by Hispanic mothers and black mothers.
Recommended Citation
Kratz, Vera, "The Motherhood Wage Penalty: New Evidence on Long-run Effects and Group Heterogeneity" (2021). CMC Senior Theses. 2584.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2584
