The Motherhood Penalty in China

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the current situation of motherhood penalty in China by examining the effects of the number of children on women's wages. Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2018, this paper mainly uses a fixed effects model to conduct the study on the effects of the number of children on women's wages and income for Chinese women aged 18 to 55. The empirical results indicate that in balanced panel data, the number of children has a significant negative effect on both mothers' wages and income after controlling for human capital, marital status and job characteristics, with a significant decrease of 16.7% in the wage rate and a significant reduction of almost 532 yuan in monthly income. Further heterogeneity and robustness tests are also conducted to confirm the findings. The policy implementation part also suggests that measures should be taken to reduce the current motherhood penalty faced by Chinese women.