Does Biology Drive Child Penalties? Evidence from Biological and Adoptive Families

This paper investigates if the impact of children on the labor market outcomes of women relative to men — child penalties — can be explained by the biological links between mother and child. We estimate child penalties in biological and adoptive families using event studies around the arrival of children and almost forty years of adoption data from Denmark. Short-run child penalties are slightly larger for biological mothers than for adoptive mothers, but their long-run child penalties are virtually identical and precisely estimated. This suggests that biology is not a key driver of child-related gender gaps. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.