The Impact of Parenthood on the Gender Gap in Italy

We examine the impact of parenthood on labor market outcomes for men and women in Italy. We perform two analyses. First, we use a fixed effects framework to examine the impact of marriage and childbearing on labor market outcomes separately for men and women. Then, we follow the child penalty approach to examine the total impact of childbearing on gender inequality. We find that childbirth leads to lower employment and earnings for women with little change for men. These impacts increase with the number of children. Overall, having a child leads to a 39.1% decrease in female employment, a 12.2% increase in part-time work, and a 33% decline in income over the following 10 years relative to (non-significant) changes for men.