Wealth: Children have this influence on income

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First in the video: According to the study: Are you average with your wealth?

The older, the higher the wealth? Yes, but only up to a certain age.

Do children negatively influence parents' income? A study shows the clear financial losers among parents.

Having a child is the greatest thing for expectant parents. However, having a child also comes with costs. Almost every parent can tell you a thing or two about this.

Those who bear by far the greatest financial burden are mothers. Like a study by theBertelsmann Foundationhas been shown that mothers suffer significantly greater wage losses over the course of their lives than childless women.

According to the study, mothers earn on average 40 percent less income than childless women.The number of children also has a negative impact on income. Anyone who has three or more children receives an average salary of up to 70 percent less.

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But anyone who thinks that it's the same with fathers is wrong. As the study shows, children have little influence on men's salaries. Depending on age, fathers’ salaries even increase.

Over the years, the salaries of fathers and childless men eventually converge and later level out. The reason: The income of childless men increases again in the last third of their working life.

The results of the study show that there is a large income gap not only between men and women, but also between mothers and women without children. This income gap is also known as “Motherhood Lifetime Penalty" designated.

Differences in salary between mothers and women without children: these are the reasons

The reasons for the unequal income development are obvious. Since it is still predominantly women who take on care work, i.e. child care, household chores or caring for relatives, they are more often affected by periods of unemployment. “This distribution of roles means that women work part-time more often than men and that their working histories are more characterized by periods of inactivity in the labor market than those of men,” conclude the study’s authors, Manuela Barišić and Valentina Sara Consiglio.

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On the one hand, the results of the study show that looking at the gender pay gap does not reflect the entire extent of income inequality between men and women. On the other hand, the study shows that the...Motherhood Lifetime Penaltyhas strengthened.

Overall, the opportunities for women in the labor market have improved, meaning that the lifetime income of childless women and men has continued to converge. However, this also means that mothers have a greater loss of income because they have to accept even greater financial losses than would be the case if they had no children due to “the dominant model of the male breadwinner or female breadwinner model”.

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