After completing their doctorates, many new PhDs must ask themselves important questions about their careers and lives: Should I pursue an academic career? Should I look for a job in the private sector? And of course: How should I plan my family and parental leave?

A research team led by Christiane Gross, Chair of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Research at Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (JMU), investigated how parental leave affects the income of highly educated parents. The researchers published their findings in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Data from over 5,000 Doctoral Graduates

The team used a representative study conducted by the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) across Germany as its data basis, involving over 5,000 doctoral graduates from all disciplines in the 2014 doctoral cohort. The study period covered the first seven years after completion of the doctorate. Here are the most important findings:

• Two-thirds of all respondents have at least one child. Of these, just under 80 percent take parental leave at least once.
• Women with doctorates take parental leave more often and for longer periods than men with doctorates.
• Only one in 50 mothers does not take parental leave; among fathers, the figure is one in three.
• Fathers usually take only short (one to two months) or medium-length (three to seven months) career breaks, while 56 percent of mothers take more than a year of parental leave.
• A longer absence of more than 12 months is associated with a loss of income for both mothers and fathers. However, women are affected by this significantly more often than men.

“The results suggest that the unequal use of parental leave between women and men is an important factor in the wage gap between them,” says Gross. The findings also support labor market theories that suggest that taking parental leave can have a negative impact on career progression and income.

About the Project

The publication was based on the project “Subjective and objective professional success of PhD holders in Germany”, which was funded by the German Research Foundation. It was based at the Chair of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Research at the JMU Institute of Political Science and Sociology and was carried out in cooperation with the DZHW. The project ran from January 2020 to the end of June 2024.

The project used the DZHW's doctoral panel, which surveyed over 5,000 doctoral graduates, as its data basis. The aim was to provide a multidimensional picture of professional success: the team examined and compared both objective success criteria, such as income, and subjective success criteria, such as the achievement of career plans.

More information on the project website: https://www.politikwissenschaft.uni-wuerzburg.de/lehrbereiche/empirische/forschung/dfg-projekt-subjektiver-und-objektiver-berufserfolg-von-promovierten-in-deutschland/