Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women’s wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the US, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labor market discrimination.

中文翻译：

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雇用做法是否会因生孩子而惩罚女性而使男性受益？来自德国的实验证据

尽管来自许多国家的观察性研究一致表明，生育对女性的工资有负面影响，但关于其对被雇用可能性影响的实验结果并不具有决定性。在美国这个典型的自由市场经济体中已经报道了雇佣中的母性惩罚，但在典型的社会民主福利国家瑞典则没有报道。本研究以德国的实地实验为基础，考察了在典型的保守福利国家中，父母身份对招聘过程的影响。我的研究结果表明，招聘过程确实会惩罚女性，而不是惩罚男性生育孩子。除了提供理论解释为什么在德国背景下特别有可能发生招聘中的母性惩罚之外，