In an ideal meritocratic society, labour market outcomes should depend on employees´ skills and not on individual biological traits, such as age, sex or their number of children. However, in reality a vast body of literature shows that motherhood penalties are common in the European labour markets, where a larger number of children means poorer career outcomes among mothers. In a recent study, Anna Baranowska-Rataj (Umeå University) and Anna Matysiak (University of Warsaw) investigate the impact of family size on fathers´ labour market outcomes.
The study uses the data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) compiled by Eurostat to examine how family size is related to fathers’ probability of working, number of working hours, job rank, wages and job stability. Information about multiple births and instrumental variable models are utilised in order to reduce selection bias. Benefiting from the comparative dimension of EU-SILC data, the study compares the effects across European countries with diverse social beliefs about men’s financial and caregiving responsibilities.
The results show that, in general, family size is positively correlated with fathers’ labour market outcomes in Europe. For example, having more children is associated with a higher job rank, higher wages and better chances for permanent employment. Many of these benefits from family size among fathers are driven by the fact that a substantial number of men with more favourable labour market outcomes tend to be fathers with larger families. In order to avoid that this fact influences their analysis, the authors use instrumental variable models to analyse their data. By doing so, they also find some traces of the family size premium for men, however only in more conservative countries, where fathers are considered the main income providers, and the acceptance of involved fatherhood is weak. In egalitarian countries, family size brings fewer labour market benefits for fathers, leaving more space for rewards that follow meritocratic rules.