Do Highly Paid, Highly Skilled Women Experience the Largest

ASRXXX10.1177/0003122416673598American Sociological ReviewEngland et al. 6735982016 American Sociological Review 2016, Vol. 81(6) 1161 –1189 Do Highly Paid, Highly Skilled © American Sociological Association 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0003122416673598 Women Experience the Largest http://asr.sagepub.com Motherhood Penalty? Paula England,a Jonathan Bearak,b Michelle J. Budig,c and Melissa J. Hodgesd Abstract Motherhood reduces women’s wages. But does the size of this penalty differ between more and less advantaged women? To answer this, we use unconditional quantile regression models with person-fixed effects, and panel data from the 1979 to 2010 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). We find that among white women, the most privileged—women with high skills and high wages—experience the highest total penalties, estimated to include effects mediated through lost experience. Although highly skilled, highly paid women have fairly continuous experience, their high returns to experience make even the small amounts of time some of them take out of employment for childrearing costly. By contrast, penalties net of experience, which may represent employer discrimination or effects of motherhood on job performance, are not distinctive for highly skilled women with high wages. Keywords motherhood, gender, labor markets, wage trajectories Being a mother lowers women’s hourly earn- unjust—that the work of mothering is not ings. The mechanisms proposed to explain only unpaid, but also reduces one’s pay when this wage penalty for motherhood include one holds a job. Moreover, given that there is employers’ discrimination against mothers no parallel fatherhood wage penalty, the (Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007), reduced job motherhood penalty contributes to the overall performance due to the demands of mother- gender gap in pay (Waldfogel 1998). This pay hood (Azmat and Ferrer forthcoming), and gap, in turn, reduces the economic well-being the wage growth forgone during any time of single women and their children, and, to spent out of the labor force for childrearing the extent that “money talks” in relationships, (Budig and England 2001). reduces the bargaining power of women in Mothering, the quintessential care work, heterosexual couples (Bittman et al. 2003). produces public goods that many of us enjoy In this article we ask an intersectional as free riders. Although we pay nothing to question about differences between groups of their mothers, we benefit from having women in the size of the penalty they experi- spouses, friends, community members, co- ence for motherhood. Taken as a proportion workers, and employees whose good qualities arose in part through their mothers’ unpaid aNew York University efforts (England 2005). Given the public bGuttmacher Institute goods produced by mothering, many femi- cUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst nists see it as poignant—indeed, downright dVillanova University Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on December 1, 2016 1162 American Sociological Review 81(6) of their wage, is this penalty higher for women leads women to interrupt their employment, it at the top or bottom of hierarchies of cogni- lowers their future wages upon their return to tive skill and wages? Highly skilled women employment (Budig and England 2001; Staff with high wages are privileged in many ways. and Mortimer 2012). Motherhood may also To foreshadow our findings, we find that one adversely affect wages through lowering job aspect of this privilege, their higher rates of performance (Azmat and Ferrer forthcoming; return to experience, has a price—a higher Becker 1985) or through leading women to proportionate wage penalty for motherhood. trade wages for “mother-friendly” jobs. We Although very few of these privileged women are interested in the sum total of all these drop out of employment, the little time some effects of motherhood, which we refer to as do take out is very costly to their future wage, the “total penalty” for motherhood. We also because the wage growth they lose while at examine “net penalties” that are revealed by home or working part-time is substantial. adjusting out any part due to motherhood Thus, when the motherhood penalty is esti- encouraging a loss of experience, tenure, or mated to include that portion of the penalty part-time employment. As is standard, we incurred because of lost experience and ten- express all penalties as a percent of a wom- ure, these privileged women have the highest an’s hourly wage. penalties. The net penalty, tapping employer discrimination or the effect of motherhood on performance, by contrast, does not differ con- PAST RESEARCH sistently by wage or skill. Are Motherhood Effects Causal? One motivation for our inquiry comes from two articles that, taken together, present Causation is seldom certain outside of ran- a puzzle. Wilde, Batchelder, and Ellwood dom-assignment experiments, but the now (2010) find higher motherhood penalties for mature research on motherhood wage penal- women with higher cognitive skill levels, as ties suggests that associations between moth- measured by test scores, whereas Budig and erhood and wages are not merely reflective of Hodges (2010) find higher penalties at lower differential selectivity of women who are wage levels. This combination of findings is already destined to have low wages into puzzling, given that cognitive skills and motherhood, but rather are, at least in part, wages are positively correlated (Farkas et al. causal (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005; 1997). Moreover, both studies use the same Anderson, Binder, and Krause 2002, 2003; panel dataset, the National Longitudinal Sur- Avellar and Smock 2003; Budig and England vey of Youth (NLSY79), and both use models 2001; Budig and Hodges 2010; Correll et al. with person-fixed effects to remove omitted 2007; Gangl and Ziefle 2009; Glauber 2007; variable bias. In this article, we assess whether Korenman and Neumark 1992; Miller 2011; more advantaged or more disadvantaged Waldfogel 1997; Wilde et al. 2010). Some women—on the dimensions of cognitive skill researchers have assessed causal effects of and wage level—suffer larger motherhood motherhood by using instrumental variables penalties. that plausibly predict fertility but not wages As we use the term “motherhood penalty,” (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005; Kore- it does not imply that all of what we identify nman and Neumark 1992; Miller 2011).1 as a penalty is discrimination against mothers Other work shows evidence of causal effects by employers, although there is strong evi- of motherhood using person-fixed-effects dence that such discrimination exists (Correll models that control for all unchanging, unob- et al. 2007). Another mechanism hinges on served characteristics of women that might the fact that employers reward experience and affect their wages (Anderson et al. 2002; tenure with higher wage rates; thus, even Avellar and Smock 2003; Budig and England absent discrimination, when motherhood 2001; Glauber 2007; Miller 2011; Waldfogel Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on December 1, 2016 England et al. 1163 1997). One type of selectivity into mother- both before and after controls for experience hood is not adequately dealt with by fixed- are included. Theirs was the first article in the effects models—the selectivity that arises literature on motherhood penalties to deploy when changing events negatively affect a quantile regression, a technique that provides woman’s career trajectory, leading women to separate estimates for how much an inde- decide to have a child. However, Wilde and pendent variable, in this case motherhood, colleagues (2010) present descriptive evi- affects an outcome at different percentiles dence from panel data that women’s wages do (called “quantiles”) of the dependent variable. not tend to fall before, but do often fall after, Standard regression models (sometimes a birth. called “mean regression”) assess how much an increase in an independent variable at its mean is associated with a change in the How Motherhood Penalties Vary by dependent variable at its mean; quantile Women’s Skill and Wage Levels regressions provide much more information. The two articles that prompted our inquiry Because test scores and wages are moder- give very different impressions of whether ately positively correlated (England, Christo- advantaged or disadvantaged women suffer pher, and Reid 1999; Farkas et al. 1997; Neal larger motherhood penalties. The first is a and Johnson 1996), such that many women with National Bureau of Economics Research high wages have high cognitive skills, and vice paper by Wilde and colleagues (2010), using versa, it is unclear what mechanisms would lead panel data from the National Longitudinal to low penalties for women with low cognitive Survey of Youth, begun in 1979. To measure skill but high penalties for women with low cognitive skill, they used a standardized test, wages. We attempt to solve this puzzle by the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT), examining how penalties differ by various com- administered shortly after the first wave. Such binations of skill and wage level. tests tap the kinds of cognitive skills taught in We use a relatively new statistical model, schools. Nonetheless, the authors believed it the unconditional quantile regression model to be cleaner for causal inference to use the (hereafter UQR), following the lead of Kille- test score rather than education as their mea- wald and Bearak

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