Mothers’ Employment and Their Children’s Educational Gender Gap∗

Labor force participation rates of married women have increased substantially since 1950s; and the educational gender gaps for cohorts born after 1950 have also witnessed a shrinkage and, in fact, a reversal. In this paper, we advance a novel connection between the two trends: the decrease in the maternal time input in the children’s education as a result of the increase in maternal employment has a stronger negative impact on the skill production on boys than on girls. We present three sets of evidences supporting our hypothesis. First, we find that in the US, at both the state and the individual level, the educational gender gap is significantly and positively correlated with the LFPR of married women in the birth state within five years after birth. Cross-country evidence also shows a strong correlation between female LFPR of the mother generation and the educational gender gap among their children’s generation. Second, we directly examine and find evidence of the asymmetric effects of maternal employment on their children’s educational achievement which favors girls than boys in the Norwegian registry data. Third, we propose a model showing that the gender asymmetric effect of maternal employment implies that a rational and altruistic mother would work more if she has higher ratio of girls, controlling the total number of children. We find supporting evidence for this prediction in both the US and the Norwegian data.