CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Couples and the Child Penalty

May 2023

Working Paper Number:

CES-23-25R

Abstract

Existing work has shown that the entry of a child into a household results in a large and sustained increase in the earnings gap between male and female partners in opposite-sex couples. We expand this analysis of the child penalty to examine within-couple dynamics in earnings for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples in the U.S. around the time their first child enters the household. Using linked survey and administrative data and event-study methodology, we confirm earlier work finding a child penalty for women in opposite-sex couples. We find this is true even when the female partner is the primary earner pre-parenthood, lending support to the importance of gender norms in opposite-sex couples. By contrast, in both female and male same-sex couples, earnings changes associated with child entry differ by the relative pre-parenthood earnings of the partners and tend towards equalization: secondary earners see an increase in earnings, while primary earners see a small decrease.

Document Tags and Keywords

Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

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:
earnings, discrimination, earner, family, parental, fertility, marriage, adoption, couple, gender, spouse

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:
Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, Federal Reserve Bank, Decennial Census, Social Security, American Community Survey, Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics, Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board, Census Numident

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