Coordinated Work Schedules and the Gender Wage Gap

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October 2017
Paper author(s): 
German Cubas
Chinhui Juhn
Pedro Silos
Topic: 
Gender Economics
Labor
Year: 
2018

Married women with kids that are full time workers work less and allocate more time to home production than their men counterparts. At the same time the labor market is characterized by occupations that differ in terms of the coordination of the work schedule. Workers that work in occupations that concentrate hours at peak times of the day are paid a higher wage, but relatively lower if they are women. The higher demand for family time women face restricts their occupational choice and thus drives a gap in their earnings relative to men. We incorporate these trade offs in an occupational choice model with home production in which workers have comparative advantages to work into different occupations. In the model, labor supply, the supply of family time and the occupational choice are intimately related. The effect of differences in household care responsibilities between men and women in their occupational choice explain half of the observed gender earnings gap.

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