Douglas Almond

Almond will use data from the Census Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) file to examine how childbirth affects women’s employment and earnings. Gender gaps in the labor market increasingly result from the different ways parenthood affects women’s and men’s careers. He will analyze the economic price mothers pay after having children—“the motherhood penalty”—by examining labor market responses to childbirth and how these play out within working couples.  Of particular interest are heterosexual couples where women out-earn their partners prior to childbirth and for whom “motherhood penalties” might be expected to be small.