The stroller slowdown: how the motherhood penalty influences wage dynamics

Abstract

Resorting to longitudinal data from Portuguese Social Security and Quadros de Pessoal, we estimate the motherhood penalty and found that it increases as the years after childbirth pass. Moreover, by applying a Gelbach decomposition, we explore the role of workers’ and firms’ heterogeneity concluding that mothers have time-invariant characteristics that are associated with lower wages, and are more present in firms with less generous wage policies. When ana lyzing the motherhood penalty across the wage distribution we conclude that mothers amongst high-wage earners suffer higher “child” penalties.