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The Effect of Sons and Daughters on Men's Labor Supply and Wages

In this paper we estimate the effects of children and the differential effects of sons and daughters on men's labor supply and hourly wage rates. The responses to fatherhood of two cohorts of men from the PSID sample- men born in and before 1950 and men born after 1950- are examined separately, and we use fixed effects estimation to control for unobserved heterogeneity. We find that fatherhood significantly increases the hourly wage rates and annual hours of work for men from both cohorts, and that it is important to allow for heterogeneity and non-linearity in estimating these effects. Most notably, men's labor supply and wage rates increase significantly more in response to the births of sons than to the births of daughters.


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