A couple of weeks ago three European economists published this paper studying the female income penalty after childbirth. The surprising headline result: there is no penalty.

Setting and Methodology

The paper uses Danish data that tracks IVF treatments as well as a bunch of demographic factors and economic outcomes over 25 years. Lundborg et al identify the causal effect of childbirth on female income using the success or failure of the first attempt at IVF as an instrument for fertility.

What does that mean? We can’t just compare women with children to those without them because having children is a choice that's correlated with all of the outcomes we care about. So sorting out two groups of women based on observed fertility will also sort them based on income and education and marital status etc.

Successfully implanting embryos on the first try in IVF is [...]

---

Outline:

(00:19) Setting and Methodology

(01:38) Results

(04:15) Comparison to Previous Results

(07:46) What This Means For Global Fertility Trends

---

First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.