Paul Hufe

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job market seminar

Paul Hufe

University of Munich, ifo Munich
The parental wage gap and the development of socio-emotional skills in children
à distance
Date(s)
Mardi 12 janvier 2021| 14:00 - 15:15
Résumé

Labor market opportunities for men and women have been converging in recent years, altering the economic incentives for how families invest monetary and time resources into the skill development of their children. In this paper I study the causal impact of changes in the parental wage gap—defined as the difference in potential wages between mothers and fathers—on the socio-emotional skills of children. I leverage administrative and survey data from Germany to create exogenous between-sibling variation in the parental wage gap through a shift-share design. I use this variation to investigate family responses to changes in the parental wage gap, as well as the ensuing effects on children’s socio-emotional skills. All else equal, I find that decreases in the parental wage gap lead to: i) an increase in financial resources controlled by mothers, ii) a corresponding increase in households’ total financial resources, and iii) an increase in the use of informal care providers. In combination these intra-family changes have no effect on the socio-emotional development of children. My results suggest that 40% of the remaining gender wage gap in Germany could be eliminated without strong consequences for the socio-emotional skills of the affected children.

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