How Does Taking Parental Leave Affect the Wages of Highly Educated Parents?

IF 3.4 1区社会学 Q1 FAMILY STUDIES

Journal of Marriage and Family Pub Date : 2025-04-16 DOI:10.1111/jomf.13109

Steffen Jaksztat, Lea Goldan, Christiane Gross

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Abstract

Objective

The aim of this paper is to analyze (a) how highly educated women and men differ in their parental leave-taking behavior and (b) how parental leave-taking affects their subsequent wages.

Background

Labor market theories suggest that taking parental leave can have negative effects on career progress and wages. Consequently, the fact that women are much more likely than men to take parental leave is likely to contribute to long-term career-related gender inequalities. At the same time, some studies have shown that wage losses resulting from parental leave are greater for men than for women and are especially pronounced among highly qualified individuals.

Method

We analyzed data from a nationally representative panel study (7 waves from 2015 to 2021) with doctoral graduates in Germany from the cohort 2013/2014. We used fixed-effects regressions to estimate intra-individual changes in hourly wages due to parental leave-taking.

Results

Highly educated women took parental leave more often and for much longer periods than highly educated men did. Taking extended parental leave was associated with a reduction in hourly wages. However, this general finding was slightly insignificant for first-time parents. Against expectations, our analyses did not confirm higher wage penalties for men following a period of parental leave.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that the gender-specific use of parental leave is an important factor in the gender pay gap.

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休产假对高学历父母的工资有何影响？

本文的目的是分析(a)受过高等教育的女性和男性在休产假行为上的差异，以及(b)休产假如何影响他们随后的工资。劳动力市场理论认为，休产假会对职业发展和工资产生负面影响。因此，女性比男性更有可能休育儿假，这一事实可能会导致与职业相关的长期性别不平等。与此同时，一些研究表明，男性因育儿假而造成的工资损失比女性更大，在高素质的个人中尤其明显。方法：我们分析了一项具有全国代表性的小组研究（2015年至2021年共7波）的数据，研究对象是2013/2014年德国的博士毕业生。我们使用固定效应回归来估计由于父母休产假而导致的个体内小时工资的变化。结果与受过高等教育的男性相比，受过高等教育的女性休育儿假的频率更高，时间更长。延长育儿假与时薪减少有关。然而，这个普遍的发现对于第一次为人父母的人来说是微不足道的。与预期相反，我们的分析并没有证实，在一段时间的育婴假后，男性的工资惩罚会更高。结论本研究结果表明，性别差异的产假使用是造成性别收入差距的重要因素。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Marriage and Family Multiple-

CiteScore

12.20

自引率

6.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： For more than 70 years, Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) has been a leading research journal in the family field. JMF features original research and theory, research interpretation and reviews, and critical discussion concerning all aspects of marriage, other forms of close relationships, and families.In 2009, an institutional subscription to Journal of Marriage and Family includes a subscription to Family Relations and Journal of Family Theory & Review.