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Using data from the 1979 to 1998 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the author explores how gender, family, and class alter the impact of self-employment on earnings. Fixed-effect regression results show that while self-employment positively influences men's earnings, not all women similarly benefit. Professionals receive the same self-employment earnings premium, regardless of gender. However, self-employment in nonprofessional occupations negatively affects women's earnings, with wives and mothers incurring the greatest penalties. The high concentration of nonprofessional self-employed women in child care accounts for much of these penalties. Results are robust despite inclusion of controls for human capital and labor supply, job characteristics, occupational and industrial gender segregation, and demographic characteristics. The compensating differentials argument, that women with greater family responsibilities trade earnings for the family-friendly aspects of self-employment, is discussed in light of these findings. While this argument may explain women's returns to nonprofessional self-employment, it is less persuasive for interpreting women's returns to professional self-employment.

Resumen.El presente artículo versa sobre los salarios de los trabajadores del cuidado, es decir, las personas que prestan, en una relación personal, servicios que mejoran la salud, las capacidades o la seguridad de quienes los reciben. Las autoras comparan la situación reinante en doce países que presentan condiciones económicas y políticas muy distintas. Estos salarios no siempre están infravalorados, pues hay grandes variaciones internacionales que se deben, ante todo, a las características de los trabajadores y de los propios puestos de trabajo. Otros factores nacionales que influyen son las desigualdades salariales, el tamaño del sector público y la fuerza de los sindicatos.

Abstract.This article investigates the wage effects of employment in care work – conceptualized as work providing face‐to‐face client services that strengthen the health, skills or safety of recipients – in 12 countries representing a range of economic and policy contexts. While previous research has found an earnings penalty for care work, this article finds remarkable cross‐national variation in that effect. The authors find that worker characteristics and job characteristics shape the effect of care employment on earnings. They also consider how country‐level factors – earnings inequality, size of public sector, and trade union strength – impact upon cross‐national variation in the effect of care employment on earnings.

Résumé.Les auteures étudient, sur la base d'un échantillon de douze pays aux profils variés, la corrélation entre les rémunérations et l'emploi dans les services d'aide à la personne, définis comme la prestation de services individualisés qui améliorent l'état de santé, le niveau de qualification et le sentiment de sécurité des bénéficiaires. Selon des recherches antérieures, les emplois dans ces services sont moins rémunérés que ceux des autres activités; les auteures constatent aussi des écarts très prononcés au niveau international après rectification de l'incidence des facteurs nationaux: disparités salariales, taille du secteur public, force des syndicats. Elles concluent que les caractéristiques des travailleurs et des emplois sont aussi d'importants déterminants des rémunérations dans ce secteur.

This report investigates the effect of employment in a job involving care work - conceptualized as work in occupations where workers provide face-to-face services that strengthen the physical health and safety or the physical, cognitive, or emotional skills of those they serve - on the relative earnings of both men and women workers in twelve countries that represent a range of economic and political policy contexts. In addition, this report descriptively explores the characteristics of workers engaged in care employment and how these vary cross-nationally. We examine how much of the effects of care work employment on wages can be attributed to differences in worker characteristics such as educational attainment, age, gender, and nativity. Importantly, where possible, we disaggregate our category of care workers into smaller occupational groups, namely physicians, nurses, primary/secondary teachers, university professors, and domestic workers versus all other care workers to examine whether the effect of care work employment on earnings varies by the type of care work performed. We also discuss three major explanations for the potential differential pay of care workers: cultural devaluations of care work due to its association with 'women's work,' economic tensions due to the expense of high quality care provision, and political factors shaping labor market and social inequalities regarding care work. We consider how national context and social policies - including the degree of country-level earnings inequality, size of public sector, immigration, and labor union density - shape variation in the relative net effects of care work on earnings.

Using the 1979-2006 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate how the earnings bonus for fatherhood varies by characteristics associated with hegemonic masculinity in the American workplace: heterosexual marital status, professional/managerial status, educational attainment, skill demands of jobs, and race/ethnicity. We find the earnings bonus for fatherhood persists after controlling for an array of differences, including human capital, labor supply, family structure, and wives' employment status. Moreover, consistent with predictions from the theory of hegemonic masculinity within bureaucratic organizations, the fatherhood bonus is significantly larger for men with other markers of workplace hegemonic masculinity. Men who are white, married, in households with a traditional gender division of labor, college graduates, professional/managerial workers and whose jobs emphasize cognitive skills and deemphasize physical strength receive the largest fatherhood earnings bonuses.

Earnings inequality has grown in recent decades in the United States, yet research investigating the motherhood wage penalty has not fully considered how the penalty itself, and the mechanisms producing it, may vary among low-wage, middle-wage, and high-wage workers. Pooling data from the 1979 to 2004 waves of the NLSY and using simultaneous quantile regression methods with fixed effects, we test whether the size of the motherhood penalty differs across the distribution of white women's earnings, and whether the mechanisms explaining this penalty vary by earnings level. Results show that having children inflicts the largest penalty on low-wage women, proportionately, although a significant motherhood penalty persists at all earnings levels. We also find that the mechanisms creating the motherhood penalty vary by earnings level. Family resources, work effort, and compensating differentials account for a greater portion of the penalty among low earners. Among highly paid women, by contrast, the motherhood penalty is significantly smaller and largely explained by lost human capital due to childbearing. Our findings show that estimates of average motherhood penalties obscure the compounded disadvantage mothers face at the bottom of the earnings distribution, as well as differences in the type and strength of mechanisms that produce the penalty.

Recent scholarship suggests welfare state interventions, as measured by policy indices, create gendered trade-offs wherein reduced work–family conflict corresponds to greater gender wage inequality. The authors reconsider these trade-offs by unpacking these indices and examining specific policy relationships with motherhood-based wage inequality to consider how different policies have different effects. Using original policy data and Luxembourg Income Study microdata, multilevel models across 22 countries examine the relationships among country-level family policies, tax policies, and the motherhood wage penalty. The authors find policies that maintain maternal labor market attachment through moderate-length leaves, publicly funded childcare, lower marginal tax rates on second earners, and paternity leave are correlated with smaller motherhood wage penalties.