Job and Children

Today’s post picks up a comment spotted in the WSJ in March this year

Dear Economist

when is the best time to have a child if you’re considering a career in academia/law/medicine– professions with prominent career milestones (tenure, partner, etc)? Grad school (lots of time, but little money)? Before tenure/partner (more money, less time, but tenure clock is ticking)? After tenure/making partner (biological clock is ticking…)? Is your answer the same for men and women?

My dear,

I am glad you are planning ahead for this. Yours truly found out about the advantages of different professions in this regard when she was already well into her career as a political economist and pregnant.

Economists have researched your question from the gender wage gap perspective. The gender wage gap is the gap (well, shortfall) of women’s wages with respect to men’s after controlling for all measurable factors that typically influence the wage. The gap is the difference in the net wage of a man and a woman that work in the same sector, have the same education and work experience and other measurable skills…A part of this wage gap is likely due to baby breaks. And the residual we cannot explain…is possibly discrimination.

Anyway, back to the topic. Claudia Goldin researched what different professions did to women’s wages and wellbeing, and it turns out that among educated women, the doctors had it best. Yep. The earnings penalty for taking maternity leave was found to be smallest for physicians and other medical professionals, smaller than for those with a JD or PhD. And the largest penalty hit women with an MBA. Ouch. And food for thought.

A few other things you may or not, want to know: male earnings rise with number of kids, female earnings diminish, but only because of hours worked. Full-time earning women also see their salaries rise with the number of kids. By the way, MDs also have the highest number of kids, on average, from the professional groups above. No wonder.

Your Economist

Who tells the truth, husbands or wives?

Scientists who collect survey data talk to a lot of people and ask them a lot of questions. That includes a lot of husbands and wives. Sometimes they ask the same question to both, but in separate meetings. For example about what the couple own, how they spend their time, how many kids they have and how many more they want.

What is reassuring is that husbands and wives give mostly the same answers. For nearly any question, 100% of husbands and wives agree on what is going on (says some recent research on this).

On some questions however, husbands and wives disagree more. Some of these are on opinions, like ‘how big do you want your family to be?’ It’s quite possible that couples do not agree. Or maybe they don’t talk much about it. But others are about clear facts, as in: do you use contraception? In the cited research, men tended to paint a more socially popular picture than their wives, on questions related to family planning and sexual health.

Hm. Maybe due to context. Or maybe not.

What can be done? Well, the effect was actually more marked in areas where women had lower status relative to men. Areas with more equity between men and women showed more consistency.

How can a woman find her man?

Dear Economist,
much of your advice appears to be geared to men, who seem to be entitled ‘by tradition’ to be the active ones in courtship. What about women? Do economists have a view on gender differences in courtship? How can a woman find her man?
Sincerely, Emma

Dear Emma,

Well spotted. Much of the economic literature we apply to dating is indeed ‘non-gendered’ and gives the same advice to men and women. It looks like we are contradicting dating advice of the Mars and Venus kind.

But not quite. Economists have sometimes even assigned extreme gender roles. Lena Edlund rose to fame for a paper that assumed women were ‘sellers’ and men ‘buyers’ of sex, whether in a lifelong contract (marriage) or a temporary one (prostitution). The assumption is that women’s relative indifference to sex gives them a bargaining advantage.

Even if we want to take it a bit easier, the idea that women are sellers and men buyers in the dating game is not counterintuitive, and Dr de Bergerac found it to resonate with friends and family. Several successfully dating ladies reported the following activities as useful: putting up their profiles at online and other dating agencies, making sure they are socially active and well known (also see this article) and paying attention to their overall visual appeal. Exactly what a seller would do.

Try it out and let us know how it goes.

All the best,

Dr de Bergerac