Women earn less than men, especially if they have children. A study shows the sums that accumulate over a lifetime – and how wives are financially dependent on single parents.
Children are expensive, goes an eternally repeated saying. First the parents have to buy diapers, later branded clothes and then maybe even finance their studies. You can complain about that, but you don’t have to.
On the other hand, what children cost in terms of income is less often a topic of conversation because parents can work less, at least temporarily. A current study by the Bertelsmann Foundation shows what salary losses this means – seen over the entire working life – especially for mothers.
The labor market researchers Timm Bönke and Rick Glaubitz from Freie Universität Berlin examine how the family situation affects the cumulative lifetime income between the ages of 20 and 55. Using statistical tools, they not only calculate the differences between men and women, but also between parents and those without children, and between single parents and mothers in couple relationships.
The income differences determined in this way are enormous at the individual level. A West German man who is in his mid-30s today can therefore count on almost twice as much lifetime income as a woman of the same age: while men earn an average income of 1.5 million euros over their entire working life, women only earn it 830,000 euros. The gap is even greater for women with children: mothers earn 62 percent less than men over the course of their working lives. These figures are initially gross, i.e. before taxes, levies and transfers.
Mothers earn less than childless people
A comparison of mothers with childless women also shows that children are a key factor in the gender pay gap. A woman with a child earns an average of 43 percent less over her entire working life than a woman without a child. With two children, it is 54 percent less lifetime income, with three children or more 68 percent less compared to the childless. The researchers describe this effect in their study with the merciless term “motherhood lifetime penalty”.
Fathers, on the other hand, do not suffer such a financial penalty for having children. Quite the opposite: “Men with children can earn an average of up to 20 percent more than childless men over their entire working life across almost all birth cohorts,” says the study.
As far as the individual evaluation, in which women and men appear as lone fighters, which they are usually not in a partnership. In fact, many parents who do more parenting work benefit financially from the income of their partner and main breadwinner. In the second step, the researchers therefore extend their analysis from the individual to the household level, also taking state welfare benefits into account.
Single parents are left behind
If the partners’ incomes are added up and divided by two, the gap in disposable income for mothers in couple relationships is almost completely closed. As the calculations show, there is a large gap between women in the classic family model and single parents. In this way, the married woman with a child can increase her own net income from a good 400,000 euros to an disposable lifetime income of 700,000 euros with the help of the partner’s income and state benefits. The single parent, on the other hand, earns a little less anyway (380,000 euros) and even after state and family transfer payments only comes to a lifetime income of 520,000 euros.
The total lack of partner income is therefore not even close to being compensated by the welfare state and maintenance payments. The researchers state that state benefits such as parental allowance compensate for short-term loss of income, “but they are not suitable for compensating for the disadvantage over life caused by career breaks and reduced working hours”. Better childcare options and a cultural change in companies and society are decisive for this. “These are important prerequisites for a more equal division of gainful employment and care work between the sexes.”
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
