Informed Choices: Gender Gaps in Career Advice

This paper estimates gender differences in access to informal information regarding the labor market. We conduct a large-scale field experiment in which real college students seek information from 10,000 working professionals about various career paths, and we randomize whether a professional receives a message from a male or a female student. We focus the experimental design and analysis on two career attributes that prior research has shown to differentially affect the labor market choices of women: the extent to which a career accommodates work/life balance and has a competitive culture. When students ask broadly for information about a career, we find that female students receive substantially more information on work/life balance relative to male students. This gender difference persists when students disclose that they are concerned about work/life balance. In contrast, professionals mention workplace culture to male and female students at similar rates. After the study, female students are more dissuaded from their preferred career path than male students, and this difference is in part explained by professionals’ greater emphasis on work/life balance when responding to female students. Finally, we elicit students’ preferences for professionals and find that gender differences in information provision would remain if students contacted their most preferred professionals

The effect of maternity leave extensions on firms and coworkers

While a large literature is devoted to understanding the impact of maternity leave on children's outcomes and the careers of women, less is known about the consequences of maternity leave at the workplace. This paper studies the effects of maternity leave on firms and coworkers by examining a 2002 Danish reform which increased the length of parental leave by 22 weeks. The timing of the policy change gives random variation in the length of leave available to women who gave birth around the time of the reform. I find no detectable effect of the reform on the earnings or promotions of coworkers in any of the five years after the reform (point estimates are about $100) and can reject differences in yearly earnings larger than$425 overall and differences larger than $280 for female coworkers. While there are some costs for coworkers in the same occupation as women who give birth in the sample period, these costs are 1-1.5 percent of earnings. I also find evidence that the reform increases the probability of firm shut-down by about two percentage points five years after the reform, concentrated among relatively small firms. Conditional on survival, I find no impact of the reform on firm value added

The effect of maternity leave extensions on firms and coworkers

While a large literature is devoted to understanding the impact of maternity leave on children's outcomes and the careers of women, less is known about the consequences of maternity leave at the workplace. This paper studies the effects of maternity leave on firms and coworkers by examining a 2002 Danish reform which increased the length of parental leave by 22 weeks. The timing of the policy change gives random variation in the length of leave available to women who gave birth around the time of the reform. I find no detectable effect of the reform on the earnings or promotions of coworkers in any of the five years after the reform (point estimates are about $100) and can reject differences in yearly earnings larger than$425 overall and differences larger than $280 for female coworkers. While there are some costs for coworkers in the same occupation as women who give birth in the sample period, these costs are 1-1.5 percent of earnings. I also find evidence that the reform increases the probability of firm shut-down by about two percentage points five years after the reform, concentrated among relatively small firms. Conditional on survival, I find no impact of the reform on firm value added

Anticipating Unemployment: Savings Evidence from Denmark * (Preliminary and Incomplete)

Abstract This paper studies the savings behavior of workers faced with costly job loss. Using Danish administrative data on income, savings, and employment from 1983 to 2010, I find cumulative earnings losses of more than $20,000 five years after a layoff. Income losses are smaller, around 13 percent of pre-layoff income, and there is no evidence of an expenditure loss. Under a number of specifications, the data reveal higher savings in the years before a mass layoff among displaced workers than those in the same firm who keep their job, consistent with worker foresight about the idiosyncratic probability of losing their job. JEL Classification: J63, D91, E2

Information and Career Path Choice: Understanding Gender Differences in Advice Sought and Received

Recent evidence suggests that occupations and firms are key determinants of earnings differentials among men and women (Blau and Kahn, 2017; Card, Cardoso, and Kline, 2016). Research is scant, however, on what drives gender differences in these labor market outcomes. In this project, we investigate why men and women sort into different occupations, firms, and jobs, by studying whether the access to and provision of information regarding career paths differs systematically by gender. How and from whom do new labor market entrants seek advice regarding their career path decisions? Do the mentor-mentee relationships formed exacerbate or attenuate gender differences in information and expectations about potential jobs? We seek to study the supply of and demand for advice regarding career choices among college students. Specifically, we will explore whether advice seekers’ demographic characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, first generation college student) alter their access to and the informational content of advice received. We will also estimate advice seekers’ willingness to pay for mentor demographic characteristics