IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v221y2024icp277-291.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender norms and the child penalty in China

Author

Listed:
  • Zhang, Mingxue
  • Wang, Yue
  • Hou, Lingling

Abstract

We utilize a comprehensive individual panel dataset from China and employ an event study approach to investigate the influence of childbirth on gender disparities across various labor market outcomes, emphasizing the role of gender norms in shaping the child penalty. Our findings show a pronounced decline in individual earnings, labor force participation and working hours for women after childbirth, though labor force participation returns to pre-childbirth level in the long term. Such trends are not observed among men. These gender differentiated outcomes are driven by a key factor: gender norms, specifically women’s and their husbands’ views toward gender roles. Parents’ or in-laws’ views play a smaller role. Women suffer a larger child penalty in individual earnings if they or their spouses hold traditional views compared to those who, or whose spouses, hold more egalitarian views. Potential channels are that traditional views may predispose mothers to focus more on household activities and/or engage in informal jobs that are more flexible and family friendly.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhang, Mingxue & Wang, Yue & Hou, Lingling, 2024. "Gender norms and the child penalty in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 277-291.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:221:y:2024:i:c:p:277-291
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.03.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124001045
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.03.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Child penalty; Gender gap; Gender norms; Individual earnings; Labor market equality; Earnings differentials;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:221:y:2024:i:c:p:277-291. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.