Women at Work: An Economic Perspective

by Tito Boeri (Editor), Daniela Del Boca (Editor), Christopher Pissarides (Editor)

Overview

Covering employment and wage gender gaps, participation of women, fertility, and the welfare of children, this insightful volume discusses how the trend towards greater participation of women in labour markets interacts with gender differences in pay. It focusses on the scope for increasing the number of women in the labour force without negatively affecting the development of their children. The need for this volume has become self evident. At the Spring 2000 Lisbon meeting of the European Council the Heads of Governments of the EU agreed to accelerate the greater participation of women in the labour market. However, neither in Lisbon nor in the subsequent Spring European Councils of the EU was it discussed how to achieve this target - and the trade-offs that would be involved in increasing the participation of women in paid employment. Policies for increasing participation must involve some losers, or they would already have been implemented everywhere. If distributional considerations and policy trade-offs are ignored, it is only possible to set virtual targets, neglecting the reforms needed to achieve them. This book sets out a better informed policy debate about these issues, paving the way to more realistic targets and ways to achieve them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191535994
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	06/02/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Tito Boeri is Professor of Economics at Bocconi University, Milan and Director of the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti. He is research fellow of CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research) and of the Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. Tito Boeri obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from New York University and was senior economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 1987 to 1996. Daniela Del Boca is Professor of Economics at the University of Turin and is Director of the newly established Center for Household Income, Labour and Demographic economics (CHILD). She has previously been President of the European Society of Population Economists, Professor at the Politechnic of Milan, Visiting Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and Visiting Professor at New York University and Johns Hopkins. Christopher Pissarides is Professor of Economics at London School of Economics. He has held visiting positions at Yale University, UCLA, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. Christopher is currently a specialist adviser to House of Commons Treasury Committee, a member of the Cyprus Monetary Policy Committee and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and IZA.

Table of Contents

	List of Figures	x
	List of Tables	xii
	List of Contributors	xiv
	Introduction. More Women at Work in Europe	1
Part I	Women in the Labor Force: How Well is Europe Doing?	7
1	Introduction	9
2	Women's Employment Patterns: Some Facts	12
2.1	Women's role in overall employment growth	19
3	Explanations behind Women's Employment Patterns	25
3.1	The rise of female employment: a brief review of explanations	25
3.2	Explaining cross-country differences	30
4	Job Segregation	39
4.1	The data	41
4.2	Who holds atypical jobs?	44
4.3	Preferences for atypical jobs	54
4.4	Wages in atypical jobs	58
4.5	Conclusions	63
5	Wage Gaps	65
5.1	The evolution of the gender wage gap in the US	66
5.2	Cross-country evidence on the gender wage gap	67
5.3	Explaining the cross-country evidence on the gender wage gap	72
5.4	The importance of sample selection	75
5.5	Cross-country institutional differences and the gender wage gap	77
5.6	Conclusions	82
6	Rising Female Participation: The Consequences for Other Workers	83
6.1	What do we know?	83
6.2	Measuring experience in the labor market	86
6.3	Measuring crowding-out in the youth labor market	91
6.4	Conclusions	95
7	What Policy Should Do	96
	Comments	105
	References	115
Part II	Women's Participation in the Labor Market and Fertility: The Effects of Social Policies	121
	Introduction	123
8	Labor Supply and Fertility in Europe and the US	125
8.1	Fertility and labor supply: their relationship	125
8.2	Temporal patterns and cross-country differences	127
8.3	The characteristics of the labor market	131
8.4	From maternity to parental leave	135
8.5	Childcare systems	138
8.6	Child benefits	141
8.7	Family patterns and family structure	142
8.8	Comparing the effects of social policies	142
8.9	Participation and fertility decisions: empirical results from ECHP	148
8.10	Conclusions	150
Appendix 8.A151
Appendix 8.B153
9	Parental Employment and Children's Welfare	154
9.1	Parental employment and children's wellbeing: relationship concerns	154
9.2	The impact of parental employment on children's wellbeing: measuring and evaluating the effects	159
9.3	A selective review of results	163
9.3.1	Cognitive development and early childhood outcomes	163
9.3.2	Educational attainment	174
9.3.3	Other outcomes	176
9.3.4	Summary of results and discussion	178
9.4	The importance of other family processes and decisions during childhood	185
9.4.1	Family income	186
9.4.2	Parental joblessness and financial difficulty	188
9.4.3	Parental education	189
9.4.4	Lone parenthood	190
9.5	Conclusions	192
10	Changes in Labor Market Participation and Family Income Distribution	194
10.1	How do women's and men's work affect income distribution?	194
10.2	Dual-earner and single-earner households	197
10.3	Inequality in women's and men's earnings distribution	200
10.4	Intra-household income distribution	202
10.5	Conclusions	204
11	Taxes, Transfers, Labor Supply and Household Welfare	205
11.1	Motivations for studying labor supply and taxation	205
11.2	Some evidence in Europe and the US	207
11.3	Fiscal and social policies: modeling the behavioral responses	209
11.4	Measuring social welfare: efficiency and equality	212
11.5	Thinking about tax system reforms: an exercise for Italy	213
11.5.1	Comparing three reform proposals	215
11.5.2	Looking for the best	225
11.5.3	The reforms and female participation and fertility	227
Appendix 11.A	Modeling household labor supply	229
	Appendix 11.B
	Social welfare functions	232
	Equality of opportunity as a benchmark for evaluation of social policy	234
12	What Policy Should Do	237
	Comments	240
	References	249
	Final Remarks	265
	Women in the labor market and in the Lisbon strategy	265
	A jobless and childless Europe?	268
	Index	275