1382 - Racial Difference in Child Penalty
Jiaqi Li This paper documents substantial racial differences in child penalties in the US. Black women experience only half the child penalties as white women. The racial gap is primarily driven by married women with high wages in the South, returning to the labor market almost immediately after childbirth. Furthermore, the racial gap does not change after I control for the racial difference in the distribution of her prior-childbirth covariates (wage, occupation, industry, government job, job with life insurance), husband covariates (labor income, wage, or gender attitudes), uncertainty (variance in husband income, asset income, or probability of husband being laid-off), and informal help (number of relatives within walking distance, and the number of sisters). In addition, the racial gap in child penalty is uncorrelated with time-varying state-level incarceration. In conclusion, the paper largely rules out economic covariates, gender norms, homeownership, informal family help, and potential incarceration of husbands as the main mechanisms driving the gap, leaving preference and discrimination as potential explanations.