In this paper, we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay – the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We find that there is a good deal of variation across our sample countries in the effects of children on women’s employment and in the effects of children on women’s hourly wages even after controlling for differences between women with and without children in characteristics such as age and education. We also find that the variation in the family gap in pay across countries is not primarily due to differential selection into employment or to differences in wage structure across countries. We suggest that future research should examine the impact of family policies such as maternity leave and child care on the family gap in pay.
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