IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v92y2026i4p1112-1132.html

Ill‐informed beliefs: Misperceptions of the costs of unplanned parental absences

Author

Listed:
  • Erin Giffin
  • Jessica B. Hoel
  • Prachi Jain

Abstract

While most heterosexual couples say they want to divide childcare responsibilities evenly, they tend to allocate childcare unevenly. To explain this inconsistency, we focus on one possible channel, beliefs: workers anticipate (correctly or incorrectly) that employers penalize men and women differently for absences from work related to children. We conduct an online hiring experiment using framed “childcare shocks” with workers and employers. We elicit workers' beliefs about employer wage penalties for work absences and examine whether these beliefs align with employers' wage offers. Workers expect employers to penalize workers more harshly than employers do. Workers expect penalties to be worse for men than women, but employers penalize women more than men.

Suggested Citation

  • Erin Giffin & Jessica B. Hoel & Prachi Jain, 2026. "Ill‐informed beliefs: Misperceptions of the costs of unplanned parental absences," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 92(4), pages 1112-1132, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:92:y:2026:i:4:p:1112-1132
    DOI: 10.1002/soej.12774
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12774
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/soej.12774?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
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:wly:soecon:v:92:y:2026:i:4:p:1112-1132. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    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.