Everybody is discussing a great study by Stanford economist Raj Chetty on childhood development and gender gaps, and I want to say a few words, too. Here is the paper’s central finding:
First, gender gaps in employment rates, earnings, and college attendance vary substantially across the parental income distribution. Notably, the traditional gender gap in employment rates is reversed for children growing up in poor families: boys in families in the bottom quintile of the income distribution are less likely to work than girls. Second, these gender gaps vary substantially across counties and commuting zones in which children grow up.
First of all, it’s great that geography is mentioned in the study because it is an enormous factor. As for the poorest families, the reason for the gender gap is obvious: children model their adult relationship with work and money on the same-gendered parent. In the poorest families, the father is usually absent and the mother works. This arrangement teaches the girls to be financially self-reliant while the boys don’t have a model to follow in this respect. Not surprisingly, the paper points out that:
The reversal of the gender gap in low-income families occurs only among children who grow up with unmarried parents (Appendix Figure 3). Among children with married parents, men work more than women across the entire parental income distribution
In a very cute way, the paper shows the authors’ almost infantile surprise that childhood experiences shape adulthood:
Together, these findings demonstrate that gender gaps in adulthood have roots in childhood, perhaps because childhood disadvantage is especially harmful for boys.
Where the analysis fails is its male-centric interpretation of the word “disadvantage.” Since the era when the concept of a middle-class came into existence, the greatest freedom for women existed among the very rich and the poor. And the greatest constraints on female lives could be found in the middle classes. This has not changed.
To conclude, I want to reiterate the central finding of the paper and point out how crucial it is that this is finally getting recognized:
More generally, our findings illustrate that gender gaps in adulthood can be better understood by starting one’s analysis from childhood.
This is precisely what Cameron said in the brilliant speech he made recently. Way too many people act as if we were all produced in incubators from which we emerged at the age of 21 with entirely identical manufacturing specs. People beat themselves up for not achieving as much as their friend or neighbor, condemning themselves as weak-willed and unmotivated when there are potent objective reasons for the difference.
Clarissa's Blog 
… the reason for the gender gap is obvious: children model their adult relationship with work and money on the same-gendered parent.
That doesn’t explain all of the female children of middle class to upper middle class housewives who work as adults and in high paying jobs too. Please don’t say “exception” and “they compensated by having a positive father complex from their actual father”.
Two of my friends had a father who did not work for the majority of their childhoods (alcoholic, very poor health) and had a mother who was incapable of working and ill equipped to do so because of her health and schooling. They have upper middle class jobs and are very financially stable.
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“That doesn’t explain all of the female children of middle class to upper middle class housewives who work as adults and in high paying jobs too. ”
“Please don’t say “exception” and “they compensated by having a positive father complex from their actual father”.”
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These “housewives” are very often powerful, high-achieving women with fantastic educations and all sorts of professional achievements who happen not to work for a few years. Their role in the family is the opposite of quiet, self-sacrificing, infantilized creatures.
That I can understand readily because those women will impart those attitudes to their children from the workplace. But the women I’m thinking of have mothers who were pretty much housewives all of their lives. They achieved their 10th grade or high school or college degree, got married straight afterwards and went to their husband’s house where they never worked. And by “never working” I mean these women never held so much as a hobby job where they got a small paycheck or a small business on the side or an odd job. I don’t mean that they worked in the family business in any capacity. Perhaps they did something small like that but it was long after their children grew up and entered the workforce.
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Cool! It’s probably a challenging study to do, but I’d be really interested in seeing women’s earnings vs. their mother’s earnings and men’s earnings vs. their dad’s earnings, and then swapped. And maybe see how it changes from decade to decade too… I’m such a data nerd.
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