In this study, I compare men and women with and without children to analyze the effect of children on wages and earnings. By comparing the gender wage gap to the family gap for men and women respectively, I find that there is still a persistent, yet rather small, family gap for women. The constant family gap for women supports the notion that a greater fraction of the gender wage gap can be explained by effects of having children now than previously. When using yearly earnings instead of hourly wages, the gender wage gap increases whereas the family gap for women decreases. This implies that although there are several policies with the aim of reducing gender wage differences and creating possibilities for women to combine work and family, there are still concrete effects that arise from taking the responsibility for children. Because the effect of having children is seemingly constant over time for women, the results from this study imply that specific policies are needed to prevent and battle the difference in labor market outcomes that arise because of the differing effects from caring for children.

Esta tesis evalúa el papel de las características no deseadas del trabajo - llamadas disamenities - en el contexto del balance entre trabajo y familia. Particularmente, se plantean las siguientes preguntas: ¿es el descenso en el salario de las mujeres luego del nacimiento del primer hijo - llamado child penalty - acompañado por una reducción simultánea en las disamenities?; ¿cuánto salario están dispuestas las madres a sacrificar para reducir las disamenities?; ¿las disamenities propias del trabajo de las madres tienen algún efecto sobre el desarrollo cognitivo de sus hijos? En el capitulo I se describe empíricamente como las características del trabajo de las madres cambian luego del nacimiento del primer hijo y se testea la hipótesis de que si el child penalty se puede explicar como un diferencial salarial compensatorio. En el capitulo II se estima la disposición marginal a pagar de las madres para reducir las disamenities. La estrategia de identificación está basada en la baja por maternidad, la cual constituye un contexto que permite modelar más cabalmente la decisión sobre la participación laboral; y por consiguiente, mejora la metodología existente para estimar la disposición marginal a pagar por parte de las madres. Finalmente, en el capitulo III se investiga el impacto de las disamenities del trabajo de las madres sobre el desarrollo infantil. / This dissertation evaluates the role of job disamenities - job characteristics disliked by workers - in the context of work-family balance. In particular, the following questions are raised. Is the decrease in mothers' wages around first childbirth - the so-called child penalty - accompanied by a simultaneous reduction in job disamenities? How much wage are mothers willing to sacrifice in order to reduce job disamenities? Do disamenities involved in mothers' occupations go on to affect parenting behaviour and as a result harm children's cognitive development? Chapter I provides empirical evidence for changes in maternal working conditions around first childbirth and tests the hypothesis if the child penalty can be explained by a compensating wage differential? Chapter II estimates mothers' marginal willingness to pay to reduce job disamenities. The identification strategy relies on the framework of maternal leave, a setting which allows us to model mothers' decision to join the labor force accurately and hence to improve on the existing methodology to estimate the marginal willingness to pay. Chapter III investigates how disamenities involved in mothers' occupation go on to affect children's cognitive outcomes.