中文摘要
过去五十年来，男性与女性在社会经济角色方面出现了显著趋同。然而，在劳动供给、收入和高层职位代表性方面，持续存在的性别差距依然很大。此外，在美国等国家，劳动力市场结果的趋同在近几十年似乎有所放缓。本文聚焦于子女所发挥的作用，并指出，对劳动力市场结果中尚存性别差异的许多潜在解释，都与这样一个事实相关：相较于男性，子女对女性职业轨迹造成的影响显著更大。我们发现，在美国，超过三分之二的总体性别收入差距可归因于子女对女性和男性的差异化影响。我们提出一个简明的家庭决策模型，用以阐明子女与劳动力市场性别差距之间的联系，并帮助解释各种因素可能如何与为人父母这一身份相互作用，从而产生因性别而异的结果。我们讨论了若干可能使当代父母群体实现性别平等之路更加艰难的力量，并对旨在弥合尚存差距的公共政策进行了批判性讨论。（JEL D13、J12、J13、J16、J22、J31、J71）
Abstract
The past five decades have seen a remarkable convergence in the economic roles of men and women in society. Yet, persistently large gender gaps in terms of labor supply, earnings, and representation in top jobs remain. Moreover, in countries like the United States, convergence in labor market outcomes appears to have slowed in recent decades. In this article, we focus on the role of children and show that many potential explanations for the remaining gender disparities in labor market outcomes are related to the fact that children impose significantly larger penalties on the career trajectories of women relative to men. We document that, in the United States, more than two-thirds of the overall gender earnings gap can be accounted for by the differential impacts of children on women and men. We propose a simple model of household decision-making to motivate the link between children and gender gaps in the labor market, and to help rationalize how various factors potentially interact with parenthood to produce differential outcomes by gender. We discuss several forces that might make the road to gender equity even more challenging for modern cohorts of parents, and offer a critical discussion of public policies that seek to address the remaining gaps. (JEL D13, J12, J13, J16, J22, J31, J71)