Exploring Gender Differences in Marital and Parental Income Premiums Among Financial Advisors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Publication Title

Journal of Family and Economic Issues volume 43, pages15–35

Abstract

This study examined marital and parental income premiums among financial advisors. Financial advisors provide an interesting context for exploring such premiums, as financial advising is a historically male-dominated profession that has been found to exhibit large unadjusted gender pay gaps. Using a large, cross-sectional sample of financial advisors recruited via a professional continuing education website (n = 459), this study investigates whether gender differences exist among financial advisors with respect to the marriage premium, the parenthood premium, the parental leave effect, and the stay-at-home spouse premium. This study examined premiums both with and without potentially endogenous human capital covariates. Without including potentially endogenous covariates, a marriage premium was observed among men but not women, a parenthood premium was observed among women and a penalty observed among men, a parental leave penalty was observed among neither men nor women, and a stay-at-home spouse premium was observed among men but not women. When potentially endogenous covariates were included, a marriage penalty was observed among women but not men, a parenthood premium was observed among women while a parenthood penalty was observed among men, a parental leave premium was observed among men but not women, and a stay-at-home spouse premium was observed among men while a stay-at-home spouse penalty was observed among women. Exploratory Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analyses revealed sizeable unadjusted income gaps by gender (15.0%), marriage (40.2%), parenthood (7.4%), parental leave (11.6%), and spousal employment (41.0%).

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