Some women work less once they have children, but many don’t,
and employers pay them less, too, seemingly because they assume they will be less committed, research shows.
The new working paper, which covered the broadest group of people over time, found
that between ages 25 and 45, the gender pay gap for college graduates, which starts close to zero, widens by 55 percentage points.
Employers, especially for jobs that require a college degree, pay people disproportionately
more for working long hours and disproportionately less for working flexibly.
According to the data, Ms. Kerr said, college-educated women make about 90 percent as much as men at age 25 and about 55 percent as much at age 45.
When their pay is calculated on an hourly basis, they are still paid less than men for the hours they work, Ms. Goldin has shown in previous work.
Married women might also take less intensive jobs in preparation for children, or employers might not give them more responsibility
because they assume they’ll have babies and take time off.
But even married women without children earn less, research shows,
because women are more likely to give up job opportunities to either move or stay put for their husband’s job.
The big reason that having children, and even marrying in the first place, hurts women’s pay relative to men’s is
that the division of labor at home is still unequal, even when both spouses work full time.
“The pay gap is not because non-college-educated women do so well, but because non-college-educated men are not doing well,” Ms. Kerr said
