How Parental Leave Affects the Income of Doctoral Graduates
09/02/2025How does parental leave affect the income of mothers and fathers with a doctorate? This question was investigated by researchers from JMU in cooperation with the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies.
After completing their doctorate, many new doctoral students have to ask themselves important career and life questions: Will I pursue an academic career path? Do I look for a job in the private sector? And of course: How do I organise my family planning and parental leave?
A research team led by Christiane Gross, Chair of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), has investigated how parental leave affects the income of parents with a high level of education. The researchers have published their findings in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Data From Over 5,000 Doctoral Graduates
The team used a Germany-wide representative study by the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) with over 5,000 doctoral graduates from all disciplines from the 2014 doctoral cohort as a database. The study period covered the first seven years after completing the doctorate. Here are the most important results:
- Two thirds of all respondents have at least one child. Of these, almost 80 per cent took parental leave at least once.
- Women with a doctorate take parental leave more frequently and for longer than men with a doctorate.
- Only one in 50 mothers does not take parental leave; among fathers, it is one in three.
- Fathers usually only take short (one to two months) or medium-length (three to seven months) career breaks, while 56 per cent of mothers take parental leave for more than a year.
- A longer absence of more than 12 months is associated with a loss of income for both mothers and fathers. However, this affects women significantly more often than men.
"The results indicate that the unequal take-up of parental leave between women and men is an important factor in the pay gap between them," says Gross. The findings also support labour market theories that suggest that taking parental leave can have a negative impact on career progression and income.
Publication
How Does Taking Parental Leave Affect the Wages of Highly Educated Parents? Steffen Jaksztat, Lea Goldan, Christiane Gross, Journal of Marriage and Family, 16 April 2025, https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13109
About the Project
The publication was based on the project "Subjective and objective career success of doctoral graduates in Germany", which was funded by the German Research Foundation. It was based at the Chair of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research at the JMU Institute of Political Science and Sociology and took place in cooperation with the DZHW. The project ran from January 2020 to the end of June 2024.
The DZHW's doctoral panel with over 5,000 doctoral candidates surveyed served as the data basis for the project. The aim was to provide a multidimensional picture of professional success: Thus, the team correlated and analysed both objective success criteria, such as income, and subjective success criteria, such as the achievement of career plans.
More information on the project website
Contact
Prof. Dr Christiane Gross, Chair of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research, Institute of Political Science and Sociology, T: +49 931 31-89418, christiane.gross@uni-wuerzburg.de
