IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amsocr/v88y2023i6p972-1001.html

Is the Gender Wage Gap Really a Family Wage Gap in Disguise?

Author

Listed:
  • Youngjoo Cha
  • Kim A. Weeden
  • Landon Schnabel

Abstract

Despite large literatures on gender and family wage gaps (e.g., the motherhood wage penalty, fatherhood wage premium, and the marriage premium) and widespread recognition that the two gaps are intertwined, the extent and pattern of their relationships are underexplored. Using data from the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we show that family wage gaps are strongly associated with the gender wage gap, as long assumed in the literature, but with important caveats. The gender-differentiated wage returns to parenthood contribute 29 percent of the gender wage gap. One third of this is associated with occupation, but very little with other worker and job attributes. The gender-differentiated returns to marriage contribute another 33 percent, two thirds of which is associated with worker and job attributes but very little with occupation. However, 36 percent of the gender wage gap is unrelated to these family wage gaps, and the gender wage gap among childless workers remains substantial. Moreover, for Black and Hispanic workers, the pattern of association is more complex and generally weaker than for White workers. These results caution against focusing solely on the wage gap between “mothers and others†and suggest new directions for research.

Suggested Citation

  • Youngjoo Cha & Kim A. Weeden & Landon Schnabel, 2023. "Is the Gender Wage Gap Really a Family Wage Gap in Disguise?," American Sociological Review, , vol. 88(6), pages 972-1001, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:6:p:972-1001
    DOI: 10.1177/00031224231212464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224231212464
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00031224231212464?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2006. "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 45-66, October.
    2. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1997. "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 1-42, January.
    3. Patricia Cortés & Jessica Pan, 2019. "When Time Binds: Substitutes for Household Production, Returns to Working Long Hours, and the Skilled Gender Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(2), pages 351-398.
    4. Donna K. Ginther & Madeline Zavodny, 2001. "Is the male marriage premium due to selection? The effect of shotgun weddings on the return to marriage," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 14(2), pages 313-328.
    5. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01gb19f581g is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jennifer Hook & Meiying Li, 2025. "National Work-Family Policies and Gender Earnings Inequality in 26 OECD Countries, 1999–2019," LIS Working papers 901, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Tinh Doan & Liana Leach & Lyndall Strazdins, 2025. "The Economic Costs of Men's Long Work Hours for Women: Evidence on the Gender Wage Earnings Gap from Australia and Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 1073-1100, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Männasoo, Kadri, 2022. "Working hours and gender wage differentials: Evidence from the American Working Conditions Survey," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Sumit Agarwal & Richard K. Green & Eric Rosenblatt & Vincent Yao & Jian Zhang, 2015. "Who Bears the Pen? Relative Income and Gender Gap in Mortgage Signing Order," Working Paper 9475, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    3. Chi, Wei & Li, Bo, 2014. "Trends in China’s gender employment and pay gap: Estimating gender pay gaps with employment selection," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 708-725.
    4. Joseph J. Sabia & Mark Wooden & Thanh Tam Nguyen, 2017. "Sexual Identity, Same‐Sex Relationships, and Labour Market Dynamics: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data in Australia," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(4), pages 903-931, April.
    5. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    6. Caliendo, Marco & Lee, Wang-Sheng & Mahlstedt, Robert, 2017. "The gender wage gap and the role of reservation wages: New evidence for unemployed workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 161-173.
    7. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2006. "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 45-66, October.
    8. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:10:y:2007:i:15:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Kaya, Ezgi, 2014. "Gender Wage Gap Trends in Europe: The Role of Occupational Allocation and Skill Prices," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2014/23, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    10. Flinn, Christopher J. & Todd, Petra E & Zhang, Weilong, 2018. "Personality traits, intra-household allocation and the gender wage gap," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 191-220.
    11. Kristen Roche, 2017. "Millennials and the Gender Wage Gap in the U.S.: A Cross-Cohort Comparison of Young Workers Born in the 1960s and the 1980s," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 45(3), pages 333-350, September.
    12. Ge, Yuhao & Li, Hongbin & Zhang, Junsen, 2011. "Gender earnings gaps in Hong Kong: Empirical evidence from across the earnings distribution in 2006," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 151-164, March.
    13. Catherine J. Weinberger & Peter J. Kuhn, 2010. "Changing Levels or Changing Slopes? The Narrowing of the Gender Earnings Gap 1959 – 1999," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(3), pages 384-406, April.
    14. Abe, Yukiko, 2010. "Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 142-155, April.
    15. Catherine J. Weinberger, 2011. "In Search of the Glass Ceiling: Gender and Earnings Growth among U.S. College Graduates in the 1990S," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(5), pages 949-980, October.
    16. Jungmin Lee & Sokbae Lee, 2012. "Does it Matter WHO Responded to the Survey? Trends in the U.S. Gender Earnings Gap Revisited," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(1), pages 148-160, January.
    17. Jacqueline Mosomi, 2019. "Distributional changes in the gender wage gap in the post-apartheid South African labour market," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-17, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Agarwal, Sumit & Green, Richard & Rosenblatt, Eric & Yao, Vincent W. & Zhang, Jian, 2018. "Gender difference and intra-household economic power in mortgage signing order," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 86-100.
    19. Sabia, Joseph J. & Wooden, Mark, 2015. "Sexual Identity, Earnings, and Labour Market Dynamics: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data in Australia," IZA Discussion Papers 8935, IZA Network @ LISER.
    20. Francine D. Blau, 2014. "Comment on "The Female Labor Force and Long-run Development: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective"," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital in History: The American Record, pages 198-203, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:6:p:972-1001. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.