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Title: The Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Role Attitudes: Evidence from Immigrant Mothers-in-Law

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: The recent literature on intergenerational mobility has shown that attitudes and preferences are an important pathway for the intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes. We contribute to this literature by documenting that intergenerationally transmitted gender role attitudes also explain economic outcomes of individuals other than immediate relatives. Focusing on daughters-in-law, we examine whether the gender role attitudes of foreign-born mothers-in-law a ect the fertility and labor supply decisions of native US women. Our results reveal that women’s labor market participation is signi cantly positively related to the gender role attitudes in her mother-in-law’s country of origin. Employing a new identi cation strategy, we show that this nding is due to the intergenerational transmission of gender roles rather than other unobservable characteristics of the mother-in-law’s country of origin. These results suggest that the cultural values held in their source country do not only in uence the behavior of immigrants and their descendants, but can also a ect the labor force participation of native women. We do, however, not nd any evidence that intergenerationally transmitted gender role attitudes a ect the fertility behavior of native women.

Url: http://www.rwi-essen.de/media/content/pages/publikationen/ruhr-economic-papers/rep_17_735.pdf

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Authors: Bredtmann, Julia; Höckel, Lisa, S; Otten, Sebastian

Series Title: RUHR Economic Papers

Publication Number: 735

Institution:

Pages: 32

Publisher Location: Essen, Germany

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Migration and Immigration

Countries: United States