Literature Review

[eldreddyl]

Research question

Sources with theory and research hypothesis details

1. Buzard, Kristy, Laura Gee, and Olga Stoddard. "Who You Gonna Call? Gender Inequality in External Demands for Parental Involvement." Gender Inequality in External Demands for Parental Involvement (May 22, 2023). Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4456100.

• How I found this paper: I wrote it!
• Big picture question: Why does the gender wage gap persist?
  • Hypothesis: There is evidence that women with children concentrate in jobs that are flexible in terms of time; if flexible jobs pay less on average than non-flexible jobs, this could explain why women are paid less on average than similar men.
  • Theories that support this hypothesis:
    1. Wages depend on job characteristics.
    2. Workers choosing among jobs seek to maximize their overall utility from the job. Utility may come from the wage rate but also from the characteristics of the job.
• Specific question: Are there differential external demands on mothers versus fathers from their children's schools (that might influence the kinds of jobs they choose)?
  • Hypothesis: Differential callback rates will depend on both differential beliefs about the value of a response to a phone call to men vs. women and well as differential preferences/deterrents for talking to men vs women.
    1. Theory that supports this hypothesis: In choosing how to carry out a task, people will maximize their expected utility. In this case, utility is hypothesized to be affected by the usefulness of a response to the phone call as well as preferences for talking to men vs. women. All else equal, expected utility will be higher from calling the parent who will give the more useful response, so more calls will be made to moms if they believe moms will give the more useful answer.

flowchart LR
    A["Belief: more useful answers from moms"] --+--> B["Expected payoff from calling mom"] --+--> C["Calls to moms"]

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