Cultural Factors in Women's Labor Force Participation in Chile

Abstract

This article analyzes determinants of female participation in the Chilean labor force using classic determinants such as age, education, marital status, and number of children. The results indicate that the greater a woman's education level, the greater her labor participation; that older women participate more, though the rate of growth of this effect is decreasing; and the number of children that a woman has is negatively correlated to her decision to participate in the labor force. The article also examines machismo and other cultural values that influence female labor participation. The evidence suggests that the more the women have internalized machista and conservative cultural values, the less they participate in the labor market. Finally, the article concludes that the existence of these cultural factors as a group more than compensates for the positive effect of human capital variables and is statistically associated with low female labor participation in Chile.     

Economic Development and Women's Labor Force Participation in India

India has experienced steady economic growth over the last two decades alongside a persistent decline in women's labor force participation (LFPR). This paper explores the relationship between economic development and women's labor supply using state-level data spanning the period 1983–4 to 2011–2. While several studies suggest a U-shaped relationship between development and women's labor force participation, our results suggest that at the state level, there is no systematic U-shaped relationship between level of domestic product and women's LFPR. On examining the relationship between the structure of the economy and women's economic activity, we find that it is not economic growth but rather the composition of growth that is relevant for women. Further, our results suggest that aggregate changes in the proportion of women in the workforce can be mostly attributed to the movement of the workforce across sectors rather than changes in the proportion of women workers within a sector.     

Reconsidering Women's Labor Force Participation Rates in Eighteenth-Century Turin

This study presents initial estimates of women's labor force participation rates in preindustrial Turin. According to the population census of 1802, married women's participation rates were conspicuously low compared with the rates of unmarried women and widows and therefore deserve additional investigation. First, the study points out the value of a methodological approach based on the use of nonprincipal breadwinner-oriented sources, such as registers of applicants for poor relief. Here, all members of the family were encouraged to declare their occupations and activities in some detail in order to demonstrate concrete contribution to the survival of the family. Finally, the study discusses the occupational patterns of women employed as servants and as artisans and laborers in silk manufacturing. This highlights the crucial role played by migration flows and by women's access to skilled or low-qualified jobs in determining the extent of women's participation in preindustrial Turin's labor market.     

Off the Record: Reconstructing Women's Labor Force Participation in the European Past

Abstract

Conventional histories of women's labor force participation in Europe conceptualize the trends in terms of a U-shaped pattern. This contribution draws on historical research to challenge such an account. First, it demonstrates that the trough in participation is in part statistically manufactured by uncritical reliance on official sources that systematically undercount women workers. Second, it exploits nonstandard sources to construct alternative estimates of women's participation. Third, it analyzes the reconstructed rates to determine their congruence with neoclassical economics and modern empirical studies. Not all posited relationships time travel. Supply-side factors such as marital status and number and age of children are major determinants of modern women's decision to enter the labor force, yet appear less prominent in historical contexts. Instead, the demand for labor seems decisive. Finally, the U-shaped curve is not entirely a statistical artifact, but appears to evolve at higher levels of participation than usually suggested.     

Women's Labor Participation Rates in the Kingdom of Castilla in the Eighteenth Century

Labor participation rates are key to understanding the economic development of a given region, yet many historical studies tend to undervalue women's labor activity. Using detailed records from the mid-eighteenth century Ensenada Cadaster (the most comprehensive census of the Kingdom of Castilla during this period), this study provides a detailed picture of the number of men and women engaged in paid work and the types of work they were doing in the region during this period. The data include information on marital status, age, number of children, and occupation, allowing for an in-depth analysis of the weight of women's labor market participation at the time.     

Childcare Costs and Migrant and Local Mothers' Labor Force Participation in Urban China

ABSTRACT

This study empirically analyzes the impact of childcare costs on the labor force participation (LFP) and childcare utilization of migrant and local mothers of preschool-age children in urban China, using data from the 2010 National Dynamic Monitoring Survey of Floating Populations. The estimates show that childcare costs have a strong negative effect on the LFP and childcare utilization of migrant and local mothers. Compared to local mothers, the LFP and childcare utilization rate of migrant mothers are, respectively, more and less sensitive to changes in childcare costs. The analysis indicates that the LFP and childcare choices of migrant mothers are more constrained by the lack of access to affordable childcare than are local mothers in China.     

Sexual Orientation and Labor Force Participation: Findings from Chile and Uruguay

This is the first study that examines the association between sexual orientation and labor force participation in Chile and Uruguay. Using information on heads of households and their partners from recent census data, it applies a simple econometric methodology to measure the relationship of sexual orientation and labor participation, juxtaposing individuals who are part of straight and same-sex couples, while determining any difference in this association according to gender. The study finds that partnered gay men are up to 5.0 percentage points less likely to participate in the workforce compared to married straight men. In addition, lesbians are up to 32.7 percentage points more likely to participate in the labor force compared to married straight women. Trends between the two countries are similar, but the likelihood of participating in the labor force differs significantly. Conservatism in the cultural context and legal frameworks of each country arises as a possible explanation.     

The Feminization U in South Africa: Economic Structure and Women's Labor Force Participation

The feminization U theory claims that women’s labor force participation drops during the initial phase of industrialization and rises once a certain level of development is reached. This paper is the first to exploit the diversity in economic structure across municipalities to consider the shape of the feminization U in a developing country. Using data from South Africa’s 2007 Community Survey, this study investigates whether a feminization U exists. Results reveal a U-shaped relationship between the share of nonagricultural employment and women’s probability of being in the labor force. Results show that the exclusion of informal urban employment leads to an overestimation of the U slope and part of the decline in women’s labor force participation during early structural change is likely related to household and care constraints. A U-shaped relationship is not found between the share of households with electricity and women’s probability of being in the labor force.     

Women in the Rural and Industrial Labor Force in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

This contribution analyzes determinants of women's labor force participation (LFP) in northwest coastal Spain (Galicia) in the second half of the nineteenth century. The study uses census takers' notebooks from 1857 and 1870 in three municipalities with different economic structures: Nigrán, an agricultural municipality in southern Galicia on the estuary of Vigo, where women predominantly worked in agriculture; Bueu, an industrial town where 80 percent of women were employed in fish processing and related activities; and Coruña, Galicia's biggest city in 1857, where commerce and services were the main economic activities. The sample represents 2 percent of the region's population. The study focuses both on demand – how the local economic structure influenced the entrance of women into the labor market; and supply – how age, civil status, and number of children influenced women's LFP. The industrialization of coastal Galicia impelled women's high participation rates.     

The Gender Contract under Neoliberalism: Palestinian-Israeli Women's Labor Force Participation

This paper interprets the pressure to raise Palestinian-Israeli women’s labor force participation within the unfolding neoliberal project in Israel, arguing that women’s stalled workforce integration reflects embedded economic rationality. Poor infrastructure and discriminatory policies, combined with Israel’s rapid economic privatization, set contradictory expectations for Palestinian-Israeli women: their opportunity-cost calculations include entitlements to economic protection alongside obligations to provide expenditure-saving domestic labor. Yet growing pressure and desire to join the paid workforce suggest that the gender contract may be changing. This cultural schema, which links women’s economic strategizing to their sense of feminine propriety, is transforming as part of a broader transition to a market-led gender regime, with the paradoxical effect of encouraging women’s employment while simultaneously impoverishing them. By dwelling on the dialectics of culture and the structure of work opportunities, and women’s agency, this paper aims to resolves an impasse in the current debate on women’s low workforce participation.     

劳动力产权与基本经济制度

劳动力作为一项特殊资产,存在着特定的产权结构.劳动力产权有着五层次的结构.当劳动力主体不能完全拥有这五层次的产权时,即存在着对劳动力产权的强制分割,这种分割的具体差别也就构成了不同基本经济制度之间的本质区别.当劳动力主体完整地拥有这五层次的产权时,则意味着劳动力主体是"自由"的,而这正是自由市场经济制度的本质所在.     

家庭收入与中国城镇已婚妇女劳动参与决策分析

在中国经济的转型期间女性劳动参与率出现了明显下降,这种下降趋势在年龄较大以及教育程度较低的妇女群组中表现更为突出。与此同时我国的男女收入差距也在不断扩大。然而丈夫收入并不能充分解释女性劳动参与率的变动。已婚妇女劳动参与率下降最大的家庭并不是丈夫收入增长最快的家庭。1995—2002年间丈夫收入仅仅解释了整体已婚妇女劳动参与率变动的12.87%,以及低收入家庭中已婚妇女劳动参与率变动的7.74%。与其说我国女性劳动参与率的下降是家庭收入提高从而家庭重新分工的自主选择,不如说是严峻的就业形势所迫。     

家庭结构对青年群体劳动参与率的影响

家庭结构对青年群体劳动参与率有影响。基于CGSS2008数据,通过Probit和IV Probit模型实证分析发现:从总体看,多代同堂的家庭结构对青年群体的劳动参与产生抑制作用,而男性青年的就业参与受家庭结构的影响程度却高于女性青年劳动参与的影响程度;从户籍看,农村青年的就业参与受家庭结构的影响程度高于城市青年劳动参与的影响程度。重视青年群体的家庭特征差异,配套实行就业促进措施,是我国政府解决青年群体就业难的着力点。     

人力资本分层与劳动供给的跨期替代

通过人力资本分层的视角来研究劳动供给的跨期替代.我们发现低收入阶层劳动力由于受到信贷约束以及生活、教育、医疗等基本保障的约束,不能在实际中进行劳动供给的跨期替代,中高收入阶层具备了进行劳动供给跨期替代的条件,但由于传统文化习俗、工作合约和潜在失业威胁的存在,一般也不会轻易进行劳动供给的跨期替代.     

Women Workers in the Maquiladoras and the Debate on Global Labor Standards

Abstract

This paper represents a collective contribution to an ongoing debate on the benefits and disadvantages of export-based, industrial jobs for women as well as on the implications of global labor standards on these types of jobs. On the basis of extensive research on women in Mexico's and Central America's maquiladoras (assembly plants that produce export goods), this paper aims to problematize the viewpoints that present export-based, industrial jobs as dignified alternatives for women in the South and to question the skepticism about global labor standards as a possible alternative for improving work conditions in all sectors producing for export. In so doing, the paper stresses three interrelated issues: a) the relevance of local and regional contexts that inform diverse industrialization paths over time, b) the agency the women workers represent, and c) the legal instruments already existent in our common efforts to improve working conditions.     

Occupational,Marital, and Life-Cycle Determinants of Women's Labor Force Participation in Mid Nineteenth-Century Rural France

Abstract

The French population census of 1851 is unique among France's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century censuses, as it is the only census to provide information on the market-oriented work of women and children within and outside the home. This study utilizes that information to analyze the demographic, structural, and economic determinants of women's labor force participation in a sample of rural communes in northern France. The data reveal an industrious population in which two-thirds to three-quarters of women in farm families engaged in market-oriented work. The data suggest that women were pushed rather than pulled into the rural labor force, and that poverty was the primary factor driving rural women's participation. The census data throw statistical light on the labor market participation rates of women and children in a preindustrial setting and are likely to produce major revisions in understandings of productivity growth in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France.     

劳动者技能、劳动力流动与收入再分配

二元经济下劳动力的流动和收入再分配是经济学界长期关注的焦点问题之一.本文从标准的刘易斯模型所体现的经济及制度环境入手建立模型,分析劳动者技能、劳动力流动与收入再分配三者之间的关系,对照中国当前实际指明问题所在并提供相应的对策建议,为我国当前及今后相当长时期妥善处理劳动力流动及再分配问题提供了参考.     

供给过剩条件下我国劳动力增长的经济价值——基于我国劳动力数据的实证检验

人口因素对于促进经济增长具有重要的推动作用,作为经济活动中最活跃的因素,人口政策是政策制定者极为关心的决策因素之一.本文采用多元线性回归模型、利用1953年到2005年全国(台湾省、香港地区和澳门地区除外)相关指标的时间序列数据.运用Eviews软件,从劳动力供给的角度刻画了我国经济增长的主要因素.     

90年代以来劳动力价值问题研究述评

文章概述了90年代以来理论界在劳动力价值的构成范围、劳动力价值的实现与按劳分配、智力劳动力工资的理论解释问题上提出的许多新的观点并作出了简要的评论。随着社会主义市场经济的发展，还有许多问题，如：劳动力价格背离价值的理论问题，劳动力价格高于价值的现实问题，劳动力的特殊性对劳动力价值的影响等值得深入探讨，以使劳动价值论更好地指导社会主义市场经济实践。     

Thy Neighbor's Curse: Regional Instability and Economic Growth

We show that regional instability, defined as politicalinstability in neighboring countries, has a strong negative effecton a country's economic performance. The magnitude of this negativeexternality is similar in size to that of an equivalent increasein domestic political instability. We also identify two mainchannels through which regional instability lowers economic performance.First, regional instability disrupts trade flows. The sharesof merchandise and manufactured trade are lower in countrieswith high regional instability. Second, regional instabilityleads to increased military outlays. Defense expenditures arehigher in countries with high regional instability. In contrast,the share of government expenditures allocated to education islower in countries with politically unstable neighbors. Our resultssuggest the existence of negative spillovers among politicallyunstable neighboring countries. These adverse regional influencesshould be taken into account when projecting the future economicperformance of countries. The evidence presented also suggeststhat the gains from reducing regional instability extend farbeyond the welfare of the country experiencing political unrest.Policies directed at settling current territorial disputes ina peaceful and orderly manner can have large beneficial effectsfor parties not directly involved in the conflict.