The Gender Wage Gap: How Does Having Children Affect the Wage Gap?

Authors

Helena Rosse, Illinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow

Abstract

One of the main political debates in today’s society is equal rights for everyone, and that includes equal pay for both men and women. Currently there is a wage gap between men and women due to differences in the industries that they work in, differences in human capital, and discrimination (McLay, 2017). Since the senior class at Illinois Wesleyan is about to graduate and go into the work force, I wanted to see how a female’s wages throughout her career are affected by whether or not she had children. Starting and having a family has long been an important part of society, so it is good to know the extent to which wages are affected by children. In this paper, I am going to look at the differences in wages between four groups: men with children, men without children, women with children, and women without children, in order to analyze how having children influences the gender wage gap for women.

Recommended Citation

Rosse, Helena (2018) "The Gender Wage Gap: How Does Having Children Affect the Wage Gap?," The Park Place Economist: Vol. 26
Available at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/parkplace/vol26/iss1/18