POSTPONED: Lynn Prince Cooke (University of Bath (UK))

“Establishment Relations and Fatherhood Wage Premiums: New Insights from Finnish Administrative Data”

Abstract: Fathers often earn more than their childless counterparts, although effects can vary among groups of men. Most of this literature uses micro data and attributes these wage effects to individual selection. We instead draw on relational inequality theory (RIT) to argue the importance of establishment relations behind group differences in net fatherhood wage premiums. Establishments have received less attention in the stratification literature because of an historical lack of representative data, even though they account for as much wage variation as occupations. We develop arguments that contrast the organizational scenarios in which high-skill fathers might exploit their relative position to enhance their net wage premiums, with those in which lower-skill fathers might hoard collective group power for larger net premiums. These hypotheses are tested using 1995 to 2015 waves of Finnish longitudinal linked employee-employer data (FLEED). The FLEED is compiled from administrative data, yielding a multilevel panel data set of the population from age 15 to 70 who lived in Finland for at least one year between 1988 and 2015, nested in public and private sector firms (which may have multiple sites) and establishments (specific workplaces) over time. The final analytical sample is 261,799 individuals nested in 10,744 firms and 106 occupations. Educational differences in fatherhood wage effects in 2010 are estimated controlling for selection into fatherhood, as well as occupation and firm fixed effects. The latter allows us to compare the net wages of fathers with childless men working in the same occupation and establishment (job cell), of which there are 36,115 in the data. Results reveal that skill differences in job-cell effects are partially contingent on establishment group relations.