Abstract In many Western societies, policy efforts seek to increase fathers’ involvement in parental leave, yet many fathers remain reluctant due to concerns about earnings consequences. Despite these concerns, the consequences of parental leave and their underlying mechanisms remain understudied. Using novel German administrative data on 109,735 married fathers who became first-time parents between 2007 and 2013, we analyze their earnings trajectories following parental leave. The large sample allows for investigating potential differences in earnings trajectories between fathers who took no parental leave and fathers who took leave of different durations. To improve comparability between the different groups of fathers, we apply two-way fixed-effects models weighted by coarsened exact matching. Moreover, the data enables us to consider differences in post-birth work volume as potential confounder for differences in earnings trajectories. We find that fathers who take parental leave experience lower earnings trajectories compared with those without leave. This difference increases with leave duration: 7 years after the birth of their first child, fathers who took up to 2 months of leave see their annual earnings increase 2.2 percentage points less relative to their pre-birth baseline than fathers who took no leave—for those who took longer leave, the gap is 12.8 percentage points. While these gaps initially appear disproportionately larger for longer leave durations, the disparity diminishes once we account for differences in active employment and part-time transitions. Moreover, the differences in work volume explain a large share of the observed earnings gaps, reducing them to 1 and 4.6 percentage points.
Abstract Prolonging work life has been widely discussed in countries facing population aging. We examine the association between working from home (WFH) and both the labor market exit intentions and expected retirement age among the older workforce in the UK, utilizing data from the harmonized British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), covering the period from September 1998 to May 2020. Findings indicate that WFH is linked to reduced labor market exit intentions and a later expected retirement age, through improved subjective well-being. The association between WFH and expected retirement age is significantly stronger among women than among men. The estimated associations for the labor market exit intentions are also larger among women, although the corresponding gender interaction terms are not statistically significant. Additionally, the specific domains of subjective well-being that mediate the link between WFH and the labor market exit intentions differ between men and women. These insights support enhancing WFH policies to keep older adults economically active, which improves their well-being and advances gender equality by prolonging older women’s careers.
Abstract Has the rise of rewards to long and inflexible work schedules altered the household-level economic viability of gendered divisions of paid work within marriage? This paper examines whether household arrangements centered on an overworking single breadwinner have become increasingly competitive, in terms of family economic standard of living, with non-overworking dual-breadwinner households. As prior research documents increasing rewards to overwork, particularly in professional and managerial occupations, overworking single-breadwinner families may have become economically competitive with dual-breadwinner households in which neither partner overworks. Using decennial Census and American Community Survey data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series covering 1960 to 2018–2022, we compare breadwinner arrangements across the income distribution and decompose changes in family income into changes in men’s earnings, women’s earnings, and non-labor income. Results show that overworking male- and female-breadwinner families experienced substantial relative gains at the top of the income distribution. Decomposition analyses indicate that these gains were driven primarily by accelerated earnings growth among overworking single breadwinners rather than earnings stagnation among dual earners. Although dual-breadwinner families with overworking breadwinners remain the most advantaged group, the gap between them and overworking single-breadwinner families narrowed substantially by 2018–2022. These findings suggest that labor market reward structures associated with long and inflexible work schedules may reshape family-level economic incentives in ways that reinforce gendered divisions of paid work, particularly among affluent families.
Abstract Discourse on gender-based violence started as a political struggle driven by feminist movements allied with progressive parties in the 1970s. However, in recent years, both progressive and conservative Italian parties have proposed and approved laws to combat gender-based violence. The combination of cross-partisan legislation and sharp cultural divisions makes Italy an interesting case for examining how polarization can persist alongside legislative consensus. This study draws on a large corpus of newspaper articles (7,978) from progressive, moderate, and conservative national outlets to address the following questions: How did the distribution of frames of gender-based violence vary across the political spectrum between 2005 and 2023 (ideological polarization)? Did newspapers make explicit adversarial claims against the opposing political side (affective polarization), and if so, around which frames? Combining Structural Topic Modeling and qualitative content analysis, this article shows that the salience of gender-based violence increased across the political spectrum. However, ideological polarization persists regarding how newspapers describe gender-based violence and which solutions they privilege, with progressives increasingly focusing on preventive, rather than punitive, interventions. At the same time, gender-based violence became a catalyst for deep partisan divisions around gender identity and immigration, two discursive overlaps that fuel affective polarization. By examining the framing process as a site of both ideological and affective polarization, this study bridges the literatures on social problems and political polarization and provides a data-driven understanding about the actual content of opposing positions.
Abstract This project assessed parental stress in 2020 and 2021 during a period of racial trauma marked by high-profile, race-motivated murders of people of color. We leveraged the Contextual Model of Family Stress Re-Imaged to understand parents’ stress about children’s interactions with police in the context of racism. Findings indicate higher policing stress among Black parents. To measure racism, we assessed county-level racial segregation and socioeconomic privilege, respondents’ perceptions of community climate, discrimination experiences, and the salience of George Floyd’s murder and its aftermath in their lives. The associations between Black race and discrimination experiences on the one hand and parent policing stress on the other were both direct and indirect. Black respondents and those who experienced more discrimination found more salience in the racialized milieu after George Floyd’s murder, and this was directly associated with more parent policing stress. Other indicators of racism were associated with parent policing stress indirectly. Those living in more socioeconomically privileged contexts reported a more favorable community climate, and this was associated with less policing stress. Those living in more racially segregated contexts experienced the racialized milieu as more salient, which was linked to more policing stress. These findings suggest marginalizing contexts of racism are risk factors for Black parents’ compromised well-being.
Sociodemographic groups with higher average wages also exhibit higher internal wage dispersion, partly explaining the overrepresentation of older, educated men in top wage percentiles. Despite being widely documented, the origins of this relationship remain poorly understood. This article proposes an explanation rooted in sorting-the tendency for workers who already command higher wages to end up in the organizations and occupations that pay the most. I argue that sorting is not merely positive but also nonlinear: its strength intensifies at higher wage levels. Because higher-wage groups experience stronger sorting, their internal wage dispersion is inflated, which contributes to the relationship between group mean wages and internal dispersion. Using French administrative data, I employ variance decompositions and simulations to quantify these effects. I find that nonlinear sorting accounts for 13% of the covariance between micro-group mean wages and internal dispersion, and for 25% of the variance in wage dispersion across groups. Simulations combined with variance function regression identify education and age as the primary dimensions along which nonlinear sorting operates. In addition, the study confirms and extends prior findings on positive sorting, showing that it accounts for 38% of between-group inequality.
Scholars have identified women's simultaneous labor force and domestic responsibilities as a "double burden" but have not fully explored how these demands intersect with pursuing higher education. Research consistently shows women's increasing participation in higher education, with women-especially from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds-outpacing men in bachelor's degree attainment. Using nationally representative longitudinal surveys and matched educational outcome data, we examine students' educational trajectories from their early teens through late twenties. Our findings reveal that despite gains in college enrollment and completion, low-SES women experience significantly more interruptions in their educational pursuits after enrolling in college than both low-SES men and high-SES women. Using longitudinal interviews with a matched subsample of 132 participants, we identify the presence of a "triple burden": the simultaneous expectations of caretaking, work, and college for low-SES women. This concept contributes to the sociologies of gender, social class, domestic labor, and higher education, emphasizing the need for an intersectional understanding of the life course.
Labor market discrimination against ethnic minority applicants remains persistent despite extensive research and policy interventions. While social scientists have thoroughly examined statistical discrimination-wherein employers rely on group-level information to infer candidates' future productivity due to limited individual information in resumes-fundamental questions remain unanswered regarding the relative impact of different information types. Specifically, it remains unclear whether employers are more responsive to group-level or individual-level information updates in their hiring decisions. Through a two-stage survey experiment with hiring human resources (HR) professionals at Japanese companies, this study examines how updating different types of information affects hiring discrimination. The experiment randomly updated group-level information about ethnic minority workers' productivity (specifically, that ethnic majority and minority workers are equally productive) and provided additional individual-level applicant information. Results demonstrate that while additional individual-level information completely eliminates ethnic discrimination, updating group-level information fails to reduce discriminatory practices. Moreover, group-level information updates actually nullify the positive effects of individual-level information. These findings suggest that HR professionals' initially low expectations of minority applicants can be easily overcome through additional individual information. However, group-level information updates raise baseline expectations and the same individual-level information becomes insufficient to exceed these elevated thresholds.
Agroecology-a food production and consumption model that integrates ecological, social, and economic sustainability principles-underwent a period of significant growth in recent years in Argentina. Acquiring specialized knowledge about agroecology practices is a priority for farmers who pursue socio-environmental goals, but the process for building such expertise is not clearly laid out. While some consensus exists among agroecology practitioners about key guiding principles, institutionalized knowledge about agroecology is often insufficient, inadequate, and/or contested. Further, due to a long-standing history of state support for agribusiness-a model in many ways antithetical to agroecology-agroecology practitioners are wary of institutional knowledge that may not align with their socio-environmental principles. This raises the central question of this paper: how do farmers interact with institutions to generate agroecology expertise while navigating alignments between institutional knowledge and agribusiness? Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with agroecology farmers, state workers, activists, and technicians in an agricultural town in C & oacute;rdoba, Argentina, this paper examines how agroecology expertise is built among farmers. The article argues by way of empirical demonstration that expertise surges through what I term a work of discernment- a dynamic process involving the evaluation and selective combination of institutional and occupational knowledge, based on perceived alignment of priorities and goals. The paper draws from literature on expertise construction and dissemination and theorizes work of discernment as a strategy employed by non-institutional actors to generate specialized knowledge.
Employer-provided benefits add to total compensation and enhance economic security. Yet an increasing share of American workers lack access to employer-provided retirement and health insurance benefits, a trend that scholars link to labor union decline. I test whether state Right to Work (RTW) laws, which weaken associational worker power by targeting union security agreements, are associated with changes in employer-provided benefit coverage. Building on organizational inequality perspectives, I theorize a novel indirect impact whereby RTW conditions the returns to market-based structural worker power. I use two-way fixed effects models that leverage variation in the timing of RTW laws to estimate effects on employer-provided retirement and health insurance, relative to a control group of workers living in states that almost implemented RTW. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the 2001 to 2019 Current Population Surveys, I find that RTW weakened the inverse associations between state unemployment and retirement and health insurance benefits. Counterfactual analyses suggest declines in benefit coverage would have been lower or reversed had Indiana not implemented RTW. The findings suggest that attention to wages alone underestimate the consequences of RTW and highlight how different forms of worker power interact to shape compensation.
