Title
Work and Family Disadvantage: Mechanisms of Gender Gaps in Paid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Document Type
Working Paper
Date of this Version
3-15-2022
Funding
This research was also carried out in part using the facilities of the University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center (R24 HD044964)
Abstract
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of mechanisms driving the increase in gender inequality in paid work during the pandemic to address existing disagreement about the relative relevance of labor market and work-family conflict processes. Using panel data from the United States Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine four mechanisms in an integrated analysis that explicitly includes single-parent households and assesses the moderating role of women’s economic position relative to their partners. The results indicate that increases in gender inequality during the pandemic were largely driven by a direct gender mechanism in households with children and partly driven by gender differences in pre-pandemic labor market positions and the higher prevalence of women in lower earner position relative to their partners. The higher prevalence of women among single-parent households does little to contribute to increases in gender inequality despite single parents being more negatively impacted than partnered women and men.
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, gender gap, labor market, work-family conflict, United States
Recommended Citation
Mertehikian, Yasmin, and Pilar Gonalons-Pons. 2022. "Work and Family Disadvantage: Mechanisms of Gender Gaps in Paid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-86. https://repository.upenn.edu/psc_publications/86.
Included in
Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons
Date Posted: 15 March 2022