Essays on gender, family and labour markets

This thesis investigates the importance of gender and the family on attitudes and labour market outcomes of individuals. Chapters 1 and 2 provide evidence of the significant influence parents have in the formation of attitudes and aspirations of children. Chapters 2 and 3 seek to understand whether adolescents and recent graduates with the same amount of experience and education aspire to and attain different occupations.

Chapter 1 estimates the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes between a mother and her children. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (NLSY79CYA), this paper finds evidence of measurement error when using a short-run estimate of a mother’s gender-role attitudes. Two-stage least squares estimation corrects for this and provides evidence that the mother’s attitudes have a larger association with her children’s attitudes than previously found.

Using the NLSY79 and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database, Chapter 2 shows evidence that female (male) adolescents follow gender norms and aspire to occupations associated with feminine (masculine) traits. This chapter also finds that parents, especially when they are the adolescent’s role model, significantly influence the aspirations of children. With a gender earnings gap in aspirations of 19%, this chapter demonstrates that policies to decrease occupational segregation should target the aspirations of adolescents.

Chapter 3 analyses if male and female college graduates with the same major sort into occupations with different traits at the beginnings of their careers. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) and the O*NET database, this paper finds that occupational segregation by gender within major contributes to the gender wage gap of college graduates with gender differences in inflexibility having the largest impact on the gender wage gap. Policies should attempt to create more flexible occupations to decrease the gender wage gap of college graduates.