A new study by Matthew Rutledge, Alice Zulkarnain and Sara King reports that:
- The lifetime earnings of mothers with one child are 28 percent less than the earnings of childless women, all else equal, and each additional child lowers lifetime earnings by another 3 percent.
- When examining Social Security benefits, the motherhood penalty is smaller than the earnings penalty. But mothers with one child still receive 16 percent less in benefits than non-mothers, and each additional child reduces benefits by another 2 percent.
- The motherhood penalty is almost negligible among women receiving spousal benefits, but mothers who receive benefits on only their own earnings histories see significantly lower Social Security income.
3 comments:
Isn't motherhood usually voluntary? Sure there are always a few exceptions, but it is a voluntary decision with consequences.
Parenthood in general is voluntary. And it requires two people (or at least the gametes of two people) to make it happen.
The benefits of parenthood accrue more or less equally to both men and women (both on a family and a societal level...if nobody has kids, then there won't be anyone to wipe our butts in the nursing homes, nobody to buy stuff to keep the economy going, and nobody to pay into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds).
Why should the consequences of it fall predominantly on people of one sex?
True, 1:24, though one of the consequences of abandoning motherhood would be that there would be no one left to keep feeding the SSA monkey down the road.
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