The Motherhood Training Penalty

Abstract

Women experience slower wage growth than men over their lifetimes, a gap often attributed to the “motherhood wage penalty,” as childbearing reduces earnings. This paper links this penalty to differences in human capital using a pseudo-event study of first childbirth in Europe to document a “motherhood training penalty.” Before parenthood, full-time male and female workers exhibit similar on-the-job training trends, but their trajectories diverge afterward. In the first 1–3 years of parenthood, women are 17%–21% less likely to train, compared to a 1%–5% decline for men. Additional evidence suggests this gap reflects employers’ lower willingness to finance training for mothers, and that it is larger in countries with higher childcare costs and weaker government support for training.