We explore several problems in drawing causal inferences from cross-sectional relationships between marriage, motherhood, and wages. We find that heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of the quot;directquot; effects of marriage and motherhood on wages (i.e., effects net of experience and...

We use data on sisters to jointly address heterogeneity bias and endogeneity bias in estimates of wage equations for women. This analysis yields evidence of biases in OLS estimates of wage equations for white and black women, some of which are detected only when these two sources of bias are...