The motherhood wage gap in the UK over the life cycle

This paper examines the impact of children on female wages in the UK using the National Child Development Study. The use of a longitudinal cohort study enables to estimate of the effect of children on wages for the same sample of women throughout their life-cycle until completed fertility. This study confirms some of the negative effects of motherhood on wages as found in the previous literature. The effect of a first child is on average 8.1 % at age 23, 22 % at age 33, 4.8 % at age 42 and 0 % at age 51. The effect of a second child is 16 % on average at age 33 only. Longitudinal nature of the data also allows the estimation of long run effects and the results indicate that the negative wage gap of motherhood persists even 30 years after first entering motherhood.