American women made significant progress toward closing the gender pay gap in the second half of the 20th century, but that gap has barely budged over the past two decades. In 2022, according to Pew Research, “American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. While there are several factors at play, one of the key contributors to the gap is what’s known as the motherhood penalty and the corresponding fatherhood premium: Women’s pay decreases when they have children, while men’s pay increases. Somewhat surprisingly to me, his research, which builds on years of earlier scholarship, suggests that a country’s family policy has relatively little to do with how big the parenthood pay gap is. A society’s culture and norms seem to be much bigger factors in how big the motherhood penalty is: The more egalitarian the culture, the lower the gap.

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Persons: don’t, ”, Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais, Gabriel Leite Organizations: Pew Research, of Economic Research