Sibling Gender Composition and Women's Wages

38 Pages Posted: 25 Sep 2017

See all articles by Angela Cools

Angela Cools

Davidson College

Eleonora Patacchini

Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) ; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Abstract

We examine the impact of sibling gender composition on women's adult earnings. Using data from Add Health, we find that women with any brothers earn roughly 10 percent less than women with no brothers in their late 20s and early 30s. This effect is primarily due to lower earnings within broadly defined education and occupation groups. We then explore mechanisms that may explain this result. We do not find strong evidence that differences in parental investment, cognitive ability, self-reported personality traits, or parental expectations drive our results. However, we find that more family-centered behavior (including family responsibilities, being in a committed relationship, and intention to have children) among those with brothers partially explains the result. We then confirm our results with data from the NLSY-CYA.

Keywords: sibling sex composition, gender gap, gender roles, earnings

JEL Classification: J12, J13, J16, J31

Suggested Citation

Cools, Angela and Patacchini, Eleonora, Sibling Gender Composition and Women's Wages. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11001, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3041797 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3041797

Angela Cools (Contact Author)

Davidson College ( email )

United States

Eleonora Patacchini

Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) ( email )

Via Due Macelli, 73
Rome, 00187
Italy

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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