Abstract: Using data from the 1982 National Longitudinal Survey for Young Women (NLSYW) we replicate Korenman and Neumark's (K&N) (1992) study "Marriage, Motherhood and Wages" and obtain similar OLS estimates. Applying IV estimation to account for the endogeneity of experience and tenure, K&N find evidence in favor of the endogeneity of and obtain more negative coefficients for the children coefficients. In the IV estimation we obtain experience and tenure coefficients which are not significantly different from the OLS estimates, hence rejecting the endogeneity. As in K&N's study, our first difference specification exhibits signs of heterogeneity bias. Sample selectivity bias is marginally evident in K&N's paper, whereas we do not find evidence in favor of it. We furthermore examine the development of wage differentials over time by looking at more recent NLSYW surveys (1987 and 1991). We find that as women age, experience, tenure and education become better predictors for wage differentials among women with different marital and fertility status.
JEL Classification: J31;J13;J12