Motherhood penalties in France: Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data

This presentation is based on two papers related to motherhood penalties in France and based on administrative linked employer-employee data.

The first paper (i) quantifies the hourly wage loss incurred by women and induced by a child arrival, based on a merger of the DADS panel with the EDP dataset, (ii) wonders whether firm effects matter in explaining at least part of such wage differentials, and (iii) simulates the remaining gender gap that would prevail in the absence of this so-called family pay gap, i.e., the gender gap in hourly wages that is consecutive to childbirth.

The second paper is based on the very same data; it takes a stand from the sole focus on hourly wages by considering labour earnings as the main outcome, while decomposing the latter into its two components: labour supply at both margins (including participation to the labour market and working hours) and the hourly wage. It provides causal estimates of labour market differentials consecutive to childbirths for both genders at different levels of the hourly wage distribution, hence emphasizing the heterogeneity in this respect. Strikingly, the pattern of motherhood penalties turns out to be completely monotone along that dimension, namely decreasing in absolute terms; in contrast, one cannot reject the global nullity of fatherhood penalties. Most of the differential and the monotonicity stem from labour supply at the extensive margin; by comparison, the hourly wage gap looks almost homogeneous along the distribution.