Is the persistent gender gap in income and wages due to unequal family responsibilities?

We compare the income and wage trajectories of women in rela- tion to their male partners before and after parenthood. Focusing on the within-couple gap allows us to control for both observed and unobserved attributes of the spouse and to estimate both short- and long-term eects of entering parenthood. Our main nding is that 15 years after the rst child was born, the male-female gender gaps in income and wages have increased with 35 and 10 percentage points, respectively. In line with a collective labor supply model, the mag- nitude of these eects depends on relative incomes or wages within the family.