Gender and regional inequality in human development: the case of Spain1

In this paper, we present estimates of the Human Development Index and the Gender-Related Development Index in the Autonomous Communities of Spain. Our case study of Spain, a developed country with clear gender and regional differences, demonstrates the importance of adjusting human development indices in accordance with gender discrimination and regional inequalities. We also show the significance of the income component in assessing the development level of women in countries like Spain, where lack of employment or low remuneration are the chief characteristics of women's inequality. Our analysis makes clear that the Gender-Related Human Development Index has limited applicability in developed countries; it also illustrates the need for alternative variables or models to assess inequality in those countries.     

Post-Crisis Gender Gaps: Women Workers and Employment Precariousness

The Gender Gap Index (GGI) is very useful when it comes to international comparisons, and it offers diverse and interesting approaches to equality, human wellbeing, and development. The central goal of this paper is to demonstrate the way in which this index is indirectly related to the distribution of public expenditure in different strategic sectors of economic development. When reducing healthcare and education expenditures in order to service the external debt due to institutional investors of the shadow financial system (SFS), the gender gap widens because of the austerity policies implemented by the state. This contributes to deepening of the unpaid work within the household, alongside widening the gender gap.     

The generational perspective of gender gap in wages and education in southern Europe

This paper aims at investigating gender differentials in wages and education from an intergenerational perspective across four developed countries of southern Europe, considering the generational transmission of preferences and the gender equality systems and policies. Measures of gender inequality in wages and education permit exploring the different extent to which gender gaps depend on unobserved factors, such as discrimination. A first set of discrimination indexes is computed starting from the estimation of extended Mincerian log-earnings equations, whereas a second set is based on the estimation of ordered logistic regressions on a range of personal characteristics considered to be linked to education, controlling for family background. The main results show that family background affects the degree of gender inequality more than the gender equality policies do. Gender disparities in professional outcomes can be partly due to women’s preferences vs. lower-paid jobs because of the incomplete efficacy of national systems.     

Does increased access increase equality? Gender and child health investments in India

Increases in access to social services are often thought to decrease inequality in the level of these services between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. This is an issue in the developing world, where policy-makers often argue that increasing the level of health care, for example, will decrease gender inequality. However, increases in access to services often have empirically ambiguous effects on inequality, increasing it in some cases and decreasing it in others. This paper argues that this is not surprising, and simple economic theory suggests that we should expect a non-monotonic relationship between access and inequality. At low levels of access to investments, there is no investment for either the advantaged or disadvantaged group, producing equality. Increases in access increase investment for the advantaged group first, generating inequality. Further increases in access increase investment in the disadvantaged group, decreasing inequality. I test the predictions of this theory using data on the availability of health camps (or distance to health centers) and gender differences in vaccinations in India. I find strong support for a non-monotonic relationship between access and gender equality.     

Household Income Inequality and Income Mobility: Implications Towards Equalizing Longer-Term Incomes in India

This paper addresses three important questions. First, what are the trends, levels and sources of income inequality in India? Second, how have been the patterns of income mobility? And finally, exploring the relationship between income mobility and income inequality in the context of India. Results, based on recent India Human Development Survey (IHDS) longitudinal data, advocate that not only is income inequality very high, nonetheless, it has increased – mainly attributable to different income sources – in India. The paper also focused on whether or not this income mobility equalizes longer-term incomes. Results suggest income mobility has resulted in-albeit not robust- equalizing longer-term incomes. Thus, based on imperative findings, the paper suggests, the nature of longer-term well-being is crucial to designing policy interventions to effectively tackle inequality and in this context, economic mobility can be seen as an avenue to long-term equality.     

Trade Liberalization and Gender Wage Inequality in Mexico

Abstract

After twenty years of trade liberalization in Mexico, the relationship between gender wage inequality and trade remains insufficiently studied, in spite of evidence of increasing numbers of women in industrial employment. This study aims to analyze the effects of export orientation and other characteristics that represent the industrial underpinnings of restructuring on gender wage inequality for 2001–5. There is consistent evidence of the negative impact of export orientation on men's and women's wages and the gender wage ratio, signifying that women lose in both absolute and relative terms. This result holds after controlling for women's share of employment and the skills of both genders, contrary to the expected effect from trade on equality. There is also a negative relation between a rise in the proportion of unskilled workers and the gender wage ratio, which suggests that the trade-induced skill hypothesis cannot be considered an adequate explanation for gender inequality.     

福利水平的可持续性评价研究

在设计福利水平的评价指标和可持续发展评价指标时,一些评价福利水平的指标忽视了可持续性,而评价可持续发展的指标则忽略了当前的福利水平。长期以来,人们一方面试图用一个单一的指标来综合反映可持续发展和福利水平两个方面的内容;另一方面,也在探讨不将两方面的内容完全综合为一个指标的情况下,如何结合应用两个方面的测度指标。本文首先针对第一方面的问题以ISEW为例进行述评;其次,述评第二方面的不同建议;再次,提出将真实储蓄率作为可持续指标,并以此来评判福利水平的可持续性。     

Roots of gender equality: the persistent effect of beguinages on attitudes toward women

This paper is concerned with the historical roots of gender equality. It proposes and empirically assesses a new determinant of gender equality: gender-specific outside options in the marriage market. In particular, enlarging women’s options besides marriage—even if only temporarily—increases their bargaining power with respect to men, leading to a persistent improvement in gender equality. We illustrate this mechanism focusing on Belgium, and relate gender-equality levels in the 19th century to the presence of medieval, female-only communities called beguinages that allowed women to remain single amidst a society that traditionally advocated marriage. Combining geo-referenced data on beguinal communities with 19th-century census data, we document that the presence of beguinages contributed to decrease the gender gap in literacy. The reduction is sizeable, amounting to a 12.3% drop in gender educational inequality. Further evidence of the beguinal legacy is provided leveraging alternative indicators of female agency.

     

Accounting for Gender in Asian Economic Growth

Absent from the important debate on the determinants of rapid Asian growth is the role of gender inequality. This paper argues that gender wage inequality has stimulated growth, with Asian economies that disadvantaged women the most growing the fastest from 1975 to 1990. Low female wages have spurred investment and exports by lowering unit labor costs, providing the foreign exchange to purchase capital and intermediate goods which raise productivity and growth rates. These results contrast with recent studies that argue income equality at the household level contributed favorably to Asian growth by reducing political conflict. The divergent findings can be explained by the fact that gender norms and stereotypes that convince women to accept their low status curb labor and political unrest, stimulating investment. The results indicate that which group bears the burden of inequality in the process of economic growth matters.     

The Gendered Nature of Poverty in the EU: Individualized versus Collective Poverty Measures

Due to the adoption of the household as a unit of analysis, researchers have failed to identify accurate measures of women's income poverty. This study proposes an individualized measure of European poverty to highlight gender differences in the economic crisis. Employing data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for the period 2007–12, it compares the household-based at-risk-of-poverty rate (ARPR) and the individualized financial dependency rate (FDR). The study shows that the gender gap in poverty in Europe is considerably higher when computed through FDR. Indeed, since the ARPR constitutes a proxy of the household's average conditions, it levels down gender inequalities within the household and also variations in individuals’ incomes over time. Only more detailed data collection on intrahousehold resource sharing will possibly allow the development of more precise and realistic indicators of women's and men's risks of poverty and financial dependency.     

基于主成分分析法的人类发展指数替代技术

在本文中,我们采用基于协方差的主成分分析法来分析1990年以来UNDP发布的中国人类发展数据,然后采用Spearman秩相关系数来分析获得的主成分与HDI之间的关系。研究表明,主成分分析法不仅能够有效地替代传统的人类发展指数编制方法,其形成的动态权重结构还可以有效地透视人类发展差距模式的历史演进过程,以及人类发展的各个方面(如预期寿命、知识教育和体面的生活等)在整体发展进程中的角色变化。对中国人类发展数据的分析结果也表明,尽管1990年以来中国各地区在经济、教育和健康方面均取得了重大进步,但三项发展之间存在着严重的不协调,地区发展差距也越来越多地体现为经济发展差距,这些反映了改革开放以来中国各级政府过分强调经济增长而带来的片面、不协调的人类发展。实现经济社会的协调发展,是时代的要求,也是当前我国各级政府面临的主要任务。而强调公共服务职能、推动地方政府的服务型转型,是消除不平衡发展的关键。     

Capabilities,human development,and design thinking: a framework for gender-sensitive entrepreneurship programs

This paper discusses the ways that capabilities and human development theory can guide the creation of entrepreneurship programs, utilizing a framework of human-centered design thinking. It is well known that a variety of institutional factors shape gender outcomes and gender inequality within entrepreneurship, particularly with regard to necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship and informal versus formal sector entrepreneurship. Failure to understand the diversity of entrepreneurial activity among women, and the connection (or lack thereof) of such activity to human freedom, leads to biased entrepreneurship programs. This paper links social economic theory and practice by: (1) discussing the ways that capabilities and human development theory relate to entrepreneurship programs; (2) demonstrating that human-centered design thinking reflects the capabilities approach; and (3) showing how the design thinking framework would be used to create a gender-sensitive entrepreneurship program.     

Race,Gender and Regional Labor Market Inequalities in Brazil

This study investigates the relationship between unequal regional development and racial and gender wage inequality in Brazil. Using sample data from the 1991 Brazilian census, I estimated monthly wages for a white, brown and black women and men working in the states of S"o Paulo and Bahia. The findings suggest that while women and Afro-Brazilians in Brazil's most developed region of S"o Paulo had the advantages of higher levels of state sponsored work benefits and more equitable occupational and wage distribution, they nevertheless experienced the greatest discrimination. In contrast, the less developed state of Bahia where racial and gender gaps in education, occupation and wages were the most severe, wage discrimination was lowest.     

Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is it Equality of Opportunity or Equality of Outcomes?

This article explores the impact of gender equality on economic growth. In particular, we focus on the multidimensional nature of gender equality with the object of identifying the relative salience of different aspects of equality. Using exploratory factor analysis on five measures of gender equality, we identify two distinct dimensions: equality of economic opportunities and equality in economic and political outcomes. Regression analysis conducted on an unbalanced panel of 101 countries taken over nonoverlapping five-year periods from 1990 to 2000 reveals that a standard deviation improvement in equality in economic opportunity increases growth by 1.3 percentage points and a corresponding improvement in participatory equality improves growth by an average of about 1.2 percentage points. However, this impact is contingent on a country's stage of development: while developing economies experience significant improvements in growth from greater equality in opportunity, developed societies see significant improvements resulting from greater equality in outcomes.     

Gender,Distribution, and Balance of Payments Constrained Growth in Developing Countries

An unresolved debate in the development literature concerns the impact of gender equality on economic growth. Previous studies have found that the effect varies, depending on the measure of equality (wages or capabilities). This paper expands that discussion by considering both the short and long run, evaluating the effects of gender equality in two types of economies—semi-industrialized economies (SIEs) and low-income agricultural economies (LIAEs). Further, it incorporates gender effects on the balance of payments constraint to growth. The results suggest that gender wage and capabilities equality work in opposite directions in SIEs and in the same (positive) direction in LIAEs. In the long-run analysis, government macroeconomic management policies are shown to be necessary in order to ratify movements towards gender equality.     

改善我国公共服务不均等状况的财政政策着力点探讨

我国公共服务不均等的状况已经得到了各方面的关注。本文借鉴国内外经验,选择泰尔指数作为衡量公共服务均等化的指标,并通过实证检验指出我国公共服务均等化存在的问题。与过去部分研究结论不同的是,本文认为我国区域内不均等远大于区域间的不均等,省内的不均等远大于省际的不均等,城镇内的不均等远大于农村内的不均等。在此基础上,本文简要分析了区域内、省内与城镇内不均等问题的成因以及财政政策的着力点。     

湖北省女性科技人才差异化发展现状及对策研究

在问卷调查、深度访谈、政策整理以及大量的统计数据搜集、梳理和筛选的基础上,从社会性别视角出发,对湖北省科技人才性别差异现状进行了研究,发现科技人才政策存在性别盲点,揭示了女性科技人才发展的制约因素并给出了相关对策,以期对制定有利于科技领域性别平等的发展决策有所启示。     

The ‘Troubling Tradeoffs’ Paradox and a Resolution

Ravallion ( 2012a ) argues that the Human Development Index (HDI) embeds questionable tradeoffs between the dimensions used to compute the index. To alleviate these problems he proposes the adoption of one of the indices developed by Chakravarty ( 2003 ). In this paper I identify the following paradox: while the Chakravarty indices clearly exhibit more sensible tradeoffs than the HDI, the HDI produces more sensible rankings than the Chakravarty indices. To solve the paradox I identify the axioms behind each methodology responsible for the unintuitive tradeoffs and rankings and illustrate how to develop an index with these questionable axioms removed. This approach can result in methodologies that exhibit more intuitive tradeoffs by design, as it seeks inputs from the public as to what those tradeoffs ought to be, and produces rankings that are more in line with what the HDI wishes to measure: human development and capabilities, as conceptualized by Sen ( 1985 ).     

Coercive Harmony in Land Acquisition: The Gendered Impact of Corporate “Responsibility” in the Brazilian Amazon

In rural development, women's access to land is recognized as a condition for reaching gender equality. This contribution discusses the tension between this formal recognition and concrete realities in rural development for traditional Amazonian communities by examining large-scale land acquisitions in Brazil, a land-abundant developing country, in the wake of the 2007–08 global food price crises. This study applies anthropological and legal perspectives to analyze problems related to gender inequality caused by large-scale land acquisitions. It argues that inequalities cannot be resolved by simply changing regulations related to traditional communities’ and women's rights and that gender relations and land tenure issues reflect interconnected social arrangements based on historical specificities of traditional communities. Case studies show that land acquisitions by outsiders disrupt these arrangements, despite stated commitments to social and environmental responsibility. Such “coercive harmony” is only unmasked when communities are conscious of their rights, enabling effective use of the legal apparatus.