Parenthood, Partnership, and Pay: The Effect of Family Responsibility on the Gender Wage Gap in Science and Engineering

Abstract

This thesis examines the gender wage disparity in the fields of science and engineering, and the extent to which the burden of family responsibility affects salaries differently for men than for women. Previous research has documented a “motherhood penalty” for women in the workforce and a significant gender pay gap in science, but few studies prior to this one have explored the direct differential effect of family responsibility on the wage gap. Using data from the National Science Foundation’s SESTAT between 1993 and 2013, I study the salaries of American scientists over twenty years using simple ordinary least squares and person-fixed effects regression approaches. I measure the impact of having children of different ages, of marital status, of spouse’s work status, and of interactions between all indicators. The statistically significant results indicate that women benefit less from having a child than do men, and from having a spouse who works less than full-time than do men. These differences are also diminished by having a baby rather than an older child, wherein this gap in benefit is somewhat smaller. Moreover, there are important changes over time in the effect of marital status and having children on salary. The gap between men and women in the effect of having children has increased over time, whereas it has decreased and even reversed to favor women for the effect of being married with a spouse working fulltime.