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A new UBC study suggests that fathers earn more money in the workplace than their childless peers—regardless of whether or not they actually, uh, earned it.

The study, published in the journal Work, Employment and Society, found that men typically enjoy pay increases when they become dads. However, in the data, the wage boosts were often reduced or eliminated following workplace evaluations like performance reviews, indicating that such men initially received raises for no other reason than the fact that they were suddenly responsible for a newborn.

Given that women usually see a decline in earnings after having children, researchers call this phenomenon the so-called “daddy bonus”.

“Our findings suggest that employers are more likely to see fathers as deserving of promotions and higher wages because of an unfair assumption that men are the breadwinners in their families, and are therefore more likely to be hardworking and dependable,” lead author Sylvia Fuller, associate professor at the UBC department of sociology, said in a media release. “Of course, that assumption isn’t always true.”

The report analyzed figures from Statistic Canada’s Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, which were collected from 1999 to 2005. The sample included 18,730 men between 24 and 44 years of age in 5,020 workplaces, though researchers limited their study to white men due to the wage gap that exists between this and other racial groups.

Overall, they found that dads in professional or managerial occupations saw the biggest net wage boosts (6.9 percent) within their workplaces. Men in other occupations typically received a 3.6 percent increase. New fathers with university degrees also enjoyed a higher spike in earnings compared to their less formally educated peers.

As mentioned, however, the “daddy bonus” was usually diminished when work performance was more closely scrutinized. Fuller said this trend is problematic, particularly for employers. Not to mention it favours an already privileged group in the majority of workplaces.

“It is discrimination on the basis of family status,” she concluded. “Not everybody can or wants to have kids, but that shouldn’t affect wages. It is fundamentally unfair.”