What Drives Female Labour Force Participation? Comparable Micro-level Evidence from Eight Developing and Emerging Economies

Abstract: There are several theoretical reasons why globalization will have a narrowing as well as widening effect on the gender wage gap, but little is known about the actual impact, except for a number of country studies. The author provides a cross-country study of the impact of globalization on the occupational gender wage gap, based on the rarely used but most far-ranging survey of wages around the world, the International Labour Organization's October Inquiry. This annual survey was started in 1924 and contains a wealth of information on wages and the gender wage gap. For the period 1983-99, there is information on the gender wage gap in 161 narrowly defined occupations in more than 80 countries around the world. The author finds the following: (i) The occupational gender wage gap appears to be narrowing with increases inGDP per capita; (ii) There is a significantly narrowing impact of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows on the occupational gender wage gap for low-skill occupations, both in poorer and richer countries, and for high-skill occupations in richer countries; (iii) There is no evidence of a narrowing impact of trade, but there is evidence of a widening impact of FDI net inflows on the high-skill occupational gender wage gap in poorer countries; (iv) Wage-setting institutions have a strong impact on the occupational gender wage gap in richer countries.

Abstract: Rapid fertility decline, a strong expansion of female education, and favorable economic conditions should have promoted female labor force participation in developing countries. Yet trends in femal...

Abstract: We suggest the first large-scale international comparison of labor supply elasticities for 17 European countries and the United States using a harmonized empirical approach. We find that own-wage elasticities are relatively small and more uniform across countries than previously considered. Nonetheless, such differences do exist, and are found not to arise from different tax-benefit systems, wage/hour levels, or demographic compositions across countries, suggesting genuine differences in work preferences across countries. Furthermore, three other findings are consistent across countries: The extensive margin dominates the intensive margin; for singles, this leads to larger responses in low-income groups; and income elasticities are extremely small.

Abstract: Despite the achievement of gender equity in education in many developing countries, a gender gap still exists with respect to formal employment Through inhibiting women's empowerment and reducing the supply and productivity of labour, this gap results in poorer development outcomes This paper examines whether exogenous rainfall shocks experienced in early life explain variations in future formal sector employment outcomes It does so for Vietnam, a country that is highly vulnerable to rainfall shocks The paper employs data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey and rainfall data from the Gridded Monthly Time Series Dataset Findings suggest that rainfall shocks experienced early in life have a long temporal reach by reducing the probability of formal sector employment for women but not for men Other findings indicate that the gendered impact of rainfall shocks operates through differential effects on educational attainment and that shocks occurring in the first and second year of life are most important

Abstract: Gender gaps in labour force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We combine household survey data from 12 low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa with geospatial data on population density, and estimate simultaneous probit models of different activity choices across the rural-urban gradient.

Abstract: Although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed, there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work-family nexus. This study uses a new instrumental variable, the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children, to estimate the effect of additional children on parents' labor supply. Instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. Moreover, unlike the OLS estimates, the female labor supply effects estimated using sex-mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high-wage husbands. We also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample, while there is no relationship between wives' child-bearing and husbands' labor supply. Finally results to estimates produced using twins to generate instruments. Estimates using twins instruments are very close to the estimates generated by sex-mix instruments, once the estimators are corrected for differences in the ages of children whose birth was caused by the instruments. The estimates imply that the labor supply consequences of child-bearing disappear by the time the child is about 13 years old.

Abstract: Although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work-family nexus. This study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply [in the United States]. Instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. Moreover unlike the OLS estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex-mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high-wage husbands. We also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child-bearing and husbands labor supply. (EXCERPT)

Abstract: The predictive content of the quantity-quality model of fertility and the empirical information required for verification under a minimal set of restrictions on the utility function is described. It is demonstrated that commodity-independent compensated price effects must be known to infer the existence of the unobservable interdependent shadow prices of the model with a relatively weak structure improsed on preference orderings. A method of using multiple birth events to substitute for these exogenous prices is proposed and applied to household data from India. (Authors)

Abstract: Since the early 1970s, a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity. This meta-study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology, data, and time periods, but also different countries. We place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators. The results show that data restrictions - i.e. the limitation of the analysis to new entrants, never-marrieds, or one narrow occupation only - have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap. Moreover, we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation - like the frequent use of potential experience - has on the calculated gender wage gap. Over time, raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially; however, most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females.

Abstract: Since the 1970s the global economy has been in an era of market regulation and growing labor market ̄exibility, in which new technologies, new labor control systems and reformed forms of work organization have transformed patterns of labor force participation throughout the world. In the process, the turn of the century will mark the end of the century of the laboring man in a literal and real sense, in that women will account for almost as many of the ``jobs'' as men. This paper is a ``revisit'' to ideas and data presented in a paper written in 1988. The main hypothesis of that paper was that the changing character of labor markets around the world had been leading to a rise in female labor force participation and a relative if not absolute fall in men's employment, as well as a ``feminization'' of many jobs traditionally held by men. The term ``feminization'' was intentionally ambiguous. Perhaps a better term could have been used. It was intended, however to capture the double meaning and the sense of irony that, after generations of e€orts to integrate women into regular wage labor as equals, the convergence that was the essence of the original hypothesis has been toward the type of employment and labor force participation patterns associated with women. The era of ̄exibility is also an era of more generalized insecurity and precariousness, in which many more men as well as women have been pushed into precarious forms of labor. Feminization arises because available employment and labor options tend increasingly to characterize activities associated, rightly or wrongly, with women and because the pattern of employment tends to result in an increasing proportion of women occupying the jobs. The term could be decomposed into its constituents. A type of job could be feminized, or men could ®nd themselves in feminized positions. More women could ®nd themselves in jobs traditionally taken by men, or certain jobs could be changed to have characteristics associated with women's historical pattern of labor force participation. The characteristics include the type of contract, the form of remuneration, the extent and forms of security provided, and the access to skill. A further diculty arises from the connotations. Most observers think that work patterns that are intermittent, casual and partial are bad, while those that are stable, continuous and full are good. If the surrounding conditions are appropriate, however there is nothing intrinsically bad about a pattern of work involving multiple statuses, multiple activities and varying intensity of involvement in di€erent forms of work. Gender outcomes in labor markets do not re ̄ect natural or objective di€erences between men and women, but rather re ̄ect the outcome of discrimination and disadvantage, and the behavioural reactions by workers and employers. This means that even if the thesis of feminization were supported empirically, a reversal of trend could still be possible. That stated, the following does no more than bring the original hypothesis up to date with a decade more of data used in the original paper, bearing in mind all the diculties of making crossnational comparisons. To reiterate, the contextual developments that have shaped the growing feminization of the labor market include: World Development Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 583±602, 1999 Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0305-750X/99 $ ± see front matter PII: S0305-750X(98)00151-X