IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/29436.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Women in Science. Lessons from the Baby Boom

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Daewon Kim
  • Petra Moser

Abstract

How do children affect women in science? We investigate this question using rich biographical data, linked with patents and publications, for 83,000 American scientists in 1956 at the height of the baby boom. Our analyses reveal a unique life-cycle pattern of productivity for mothers. While other scientists peak in their mid-thirties, mothers become more productive after age 35 and maintain high productivity in their 40s and 50s. Event studies show that the output of mothers increases after 15 years of marriage, while other scientists peak in the first 10 years. Differences in the timing of productivity have important implications for tenure and participation. Just 27% of mothers who are academic scientists get tenure, compared with 48% of fathers and 46% of women without children. Mothers face comparable tenure rates to other assistant professors for the first six years but fall behind afterwards, suggesting that they face higher standards of early productivity. Mothers who survive in science are extremely positively selected: Compared with other married women, mothers patent (publish) 2.5 (1.4) times more before the median age at marriage. Compared with men, female scientists are more educated, half as likely to marry, one-third as likely to have children, but half as likely to survive in science. Employment records indicate that a generation of baby boom mothers was lost to science.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Daewon Kim & Petra Moser, 2021. "Women in Science. Lessons from the Baby Boom," NBER Working Papers 29436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29436
    Note: CH DAE LS PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w29436.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ivan Paunovic & Cathleen Müller & Klaus Deimel, 2023. "Citizen Participation for Sustainability and Resilience: A Generational Cohort Perspective on Community Brand Identity Perceptions and Development Priorities in a Rural Community," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-18, April.
    2. Baltrunaite, Audinga & Casarico, Alessandra & Rizzica, Lucia, 2022. "Women in economics: the role of gendered references at entry in the profession," CEPR Discussion Papers 17474, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Elodie Carpentier & Jennifer Brant & Utsav Bahl & Aikaterini Kanellia, 2024. "Closing Innovation and Intellectual Property Diversity Gaps: a Global Literature Review," WIPO Economic Research Working Papers 86, World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division.
    4. Healy, Olivia & Heissel, Jennifer A., 2024. "Baby Bumps in the Road: The Impact of Parenthood on Job Performance, Human Capital, and Career Advancement," IZA Discussion Papers 16743, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29436. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.