What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Gender wage gaps are frequently explained as resulting from direct discrimination, employers’ preferences over personality traits, and differing labor force attachment. We rely on a natural quasi-experiment using exogenous changes in state-level, same-sex adoption laws to distinguish between the com...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Levendis, John, Lowen, Aaron
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Original Paper
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8940587/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35341074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09835-2
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author Levendis, John
Lowen, Aaron
author_facet Levendis, John
Lowen, Aaron
author_sort Levendis, John
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description Gender wage gaps are frequently explained as resulting from direct discrimination, employers’ preferences over personality traits, and differing labor force attachment. We rely on a natural quasi-experiment using exogenous changes in state-level, same-sex adoption laws to distinguish between the competing explanations of the gender wage gap. Estimates from a differences-in-differences model show the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women shrank or inverted in those states which legalized adoption by same-sex couples. The wage gap did not change for men. This supports the parenthood hypothesis as a viable explanation for a portion of the gender wage gap.
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spelling pubmed-89405872022-03-23 What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States Levendis, John Lowen, Aaron J Fam Econ Issues Original Paper Gender wage gaps are frequently explained as resulting from direct discrimination, employers’ preferences over personality traits, and differing labor force attachment. We rely on a natural quasi-experiment using exogenous changes in state-level, same-sex adoption laws to distinguish between the competing explanations of the gender wage gap. Estimates from a differences-in-differences model show the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women shrank or inverted in those states which legalized adoption by same-sex couples. The wage gap did not change for men. This supports the parenthood hypothesis as a viable explanation for a portion of the gender wage gap. Springer US 2022-03-23 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC8940587/ /pubmed/35341074 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09835-2 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Levendis, John
Lowen, Aaron
What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title_full What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title_fullStr What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title_full_unstemmed What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title_short What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States
title_sort what same-sex adoption laws can tell us about the gender wage gap in the united states
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8940587/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35341074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09835-2
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