We ask why the gender pay gap opens up, whether things have improved in recent years, and talk about one key factor affecting women’s pay - kids.
Subscribe now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ACAST | Stitcher | YouTube | Google Podcasts | RSS
Over the past decades, women have drawn closer to men in a variety of areas - education, university degrees and workforce participation. But, women still earn less on average than men.
In this episode, we ask why this pay gap opens up, whether things have improved in recent years, and talk about one key factor affecting women’s pay - kids.
Joining us are Alison Andrew, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, Christine Farquharson, Senior Research Economist at IFS and Lucinda Platt, Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the LSE.
Zooming In: discussion questions
Every week, we share a set of questions designed for A Level economics students to discuss, written by teacher Will Haines.
- How do the percentage of woman and men who work for pay in heterosexual partnerships change after the birth of their first child?
- Analyse the potential macroeconomic impacts of subsidising childcare.
- Assess the view that childcare reforms will pay for themselves.
Participants
Economics Columnist Financial Times
Research Fellow
Alison is a Senior Research Economist of our Institute with research interests in the economics of gender, marriage and education.
Associate Director
Christine's research examines inequalities in children's education and health, especially in the early education and childcare sector.
Research Fellow London School of Economics
Lucinda Platt is a Research Fellow of the IFS and Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Podcast details
- DOI
- 10.1920/pd.ifs.2023.0014
- Publisher
- Institute for Fiscal Studies
More from IFS
Understand this issue
How can government reduce child poverty?
We're exploring why there's been an increase in child poverty since 2010 and options the government has to reduce this.
3 October 2024
Professor Sir Richard Blundell to give the Marshall Paley Lecture on inequalities
27 September 2024
Minimum wages in the UK – how high can they go?
In the UK today, earnings inequality is substantially higher than it used to be.
30 October 2024
Policy analysis
Share of 25- to 34-year-olds living with parents up by over a third since the mid 2000s
The rise in people living with their parents has been concentrated among those in their late 20s and varies substantially by ethnicity.
11 January 2025
Total real-terms spending on free entitlement hours in England
Total spending on the free entitlement doubled during the 2000s, and then more than doubled again during the 2010s.
10 January 2025
Growth in real-terms spending on the free entitlement for 3- and 4-year-olds
While spending per place and total spending have doubled since 2009, spending per hour is around 23% higher by 2023–24.
10 January 2025
Academic research
Household responses to trade shocks
We study the impact of Chinese import competition in the 2000s on workers and their households in England and Wales.
12 November 2024
Hidden redistribution in lifetime earnings: the role of differential mortality
Life expectancy gaps between gender and income groups are large and generate notable implicit redistribution in lifetime earnings via pension systems.
9 October 2024
The effect of center-based early education on disadvantaged children’s developmental trajectories: experimental evidence from Colombia
We study the impacts of high-quality, center-based early childhood education on low income children in Colombia, tracking participants over five years
4 October 2024