The Effects of Immigration on Household Services,Labour Supply and Fertility

Fertility and female labour force participation are no longer negatively correlated in developed countries. At the same time, increased immigration affects supply and prices of household services, which are relevant to fertility and employment decisions. This paper analyses the effect of immigration on labour supply and fertility of native women in the UK. Adopting an instrumental variable approach, I find that immigration increases female labour supply without affecting fertility. My results show that immigration increases the size of the childcare sector, and reduces its prices, suggesting that immigrants may ease the trade‐off between working and child rearing among native women.     

Child-custody reform, marital investment in children, and the labor supply of married mothers

Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects within-marriage investment in children through changes in household bargaining power. Variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states provides a natural-experiment framework with which to examine within-marriage investment in children. The probability of children's private school attendance declines by 12% in states that adopt joint-custody laws. We also find evidence linking joint-custody reform to higher rates of labor force participation for married mothers, which may indicate less time devoted household production.     

Female Labor Supply: Adoption and the Labor Force Participation Decision

A bstract It is well established that the existence of children in the household reduces female labor force participation. This study seeks to determine if different methods of acquiring children ( adoption versus procreation ) affect participation decisions. Empirical results indicate that, other things being equal, women with one or more adopted children residing in their household are less likely to participate in the labor force than their nonadoptive counterparts.     

With a little help from abroad: The effect of low-skilled immigration on the female labour supply

We examine whether and how the inflow of female immigrants who specialize in household production affects the labour supply of Italian women. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the family reunification motives and network effects (i.e., the tendency of newly arriving female immigrants to settle in places where males of the same country already live) which is used as an instrument for the geographical distribution of female foreign workers. We find that when the number of immigrants who provide household services is higher, native Italian women spend more time at work (intensive margin) without affecting their labour force participation (extensive margin). This impact is concentrated on highly skilled women whose time has a higher opportunity cost. These results also hold after a battery of robustness checks. We present some further evidence that is also consistent with the idea that the impact works through substitution in household work rather than complementarities in the production sector. Finally, we show that immigration arises as a substitute to publicly provided welfare services, although this phenomenon raises concerns regarding the fairness and sustainability of this private and informal welfare model.     

The Return on Women''s Human Capital and the Role of Male Attitudes Toward Working Wives

A BSTRACT . This study empirically investigates women's work interruption behavior in Taiwan and this behavior's influence on women's earnings. The most striking finding from our analysis of women's work history patterns is that a husband's negative attitude toward a working wife will more greatly discourage his wife from attaching to the labor market than will the presence of young children in the family. Thus, it is critical to educate men to give up their traditional attitudes toward gender roles in order to raise the female labor force participation rate in Taiwan. As to the effect of work interruption on earnings, a depreciation rate of 2.8% is found for women with at least a high-school level of education, while no penalty of foregone experience is shown for less-educated women. Since this depreciation effect may discourage women from re-entering the labor market, government programs encouraging self-employment should be helpful, as self-employed women find it easier to overcome the conflict between family obligations and work needs.     

Women's employment transitions around child bearing

Women's increasing participation in the labor force since the 1950s demands that knowledge about their labor supply needs to keep pace with the changing world. One important change has occurred among mothers of small children, they are increasingly working for pay in successive generations, as the break in their employment has become increasingly shorter. Legislation was enacted in the UK to outlaw unequal pay and discrimination in employment on the basis of gender, while statutory maternity leave was introduced in 1976 and extended in 1986. The proportion of mothers taking maternity leave has since increased, as has full-time employment among mothers. The authors examine the transitions into and out of paid work which women make after childbirth, helping to determine whether recent generations of mothers have benefitted from the policy changes, whether all have benefitted equally, and whether any effects persist beyond the period around the first childbirth. Study data are drawn from the fifth sweep of the National Child Development Study (NCDS) 1958 birth cohort at age 33. The experiences of mothers in the 1958 generation suggests that women have begun to benefit from the equal opportunities provisions enacted in Britain during the 1970s. The age of the youngest child is the most important determinant of women's participation over the preschool years, and relatively better educated women have the highest degree of continuity in employment across childbirth.     

Incentives to work? The impact of a ‘Cash-for-Care’ benefit for immigrant and native mothers labour market participation

To what extent is labour market participation of mothers sensitive to economic incentives? We answer this question by studying the effect on labour market participation of a Norwegian family policy programme that clearly has affected the incentives to participate in the labour market of mothers with small children. From January 1999, all parents with one- and two-year-old children who did not use publicly subsidised day-care became entitled to a benefit, ‘Cash-for-Care’ (‘CFC’). The CFC reform has increased the price of publicly subsidised day-care relative to the price of own care. Economic theory of labour market participation postulates that the CFC reform would have a negative effect on labour market participation for the person most involved in childcare. The results show that the CFC reform has affected mothers' labour market participation negatively. The effects are much stronger for non-western immigrant mothers' than for native mothers. The results support the hypothesis that non-western immigrant mothers do react to changes in the relative prices of childcare and suggests that non-western female immigrants are quite responsive to changes in economic incentives.     

Protecting Family and Race

A bstract    American economics came of age during the Progressive Era, a time when biological approaches to economic reform were at their high-water mark. Reform-minded economists argued that the labor force should be rid of unfit workers—whom they labeled "unemployables,""parasites," and the "industrial residuum"—so as to uplift superior, deserving workers. Women were also frequently classified as unemployable. Leading progressives, including women at the forefront of labor reform, justified exclusionary labor legislation for women on grounds that it would (1) protect the biologically weaker sex from the hazards of market work; (2) protect working women from the temptation of prostitution; (3) protect male heads of household from the economic competition of women; and (4) ensure that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as "mothers of the race." What united these heterogeneous rationales was the reformers' aim of discouraging women's labor-force participation.     

Young people living as couples: How women's labour supply is adapting to the crisis. Spain as a case study

In this paper, we focus on the effects of the Great Recession on the decisions of young women regarding their labour supply. Considering the profound effect of the economic recession on the Spanish labour market, and in particular on the labour supply of young people, the focus of the empirical part of this paper is on Spain. Using EU-SILC 2007 and 2012 micro data for Spain, the labour supply models of women are estimated by age group, with a particular focus on the 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 age bands, in order to establish how young women living in couples exhibit different labour supply propensities according to their partner's labour market status. Correction is made for the non-random selection of women living in couples in the younger age groups. This first analytical step reveals a negative effect on the likelihood of forming a new household in the context of precarious employment conditions. Analytical results regarding the labour supply of women by age group confirmed a discouraging effect of young children on the labour supply of the youngest mothers, as well as a positive effect from being the owner of a house purchased under mortgage.The literature shows that different effects can be at work within the crisis: an added worker effect (AWE), which is countercyclical labour supply behaviour involving an increase in individual labour supply in response to transitory shocks in the partner's earnings, and a procyclical discouraged worker effect. The resulting estimations of the present study suggest an AWE in 2012 for young women living in couples. While in 2012 the discouragement effect was only prevalent for women over 40, in 2007 it was also prevalent among younger women. Women's higher propensity to enter the labour market when their partner becomes unemployed or is persistently unemployed, coupled with their likelihood to be inactive in the presence of young children, would suggest a need for labour market policies targeted towards young women. Childcare facilities could mitigate the latter effect and produce a more continuous work profile, avoiding the negative effects of work experience interruptions on labour supply during the female lifecycle.     

The disabling effects of enabling social policies on organisations’ human capital development practices for women

Paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are social policies designed to enhance parents' labour force participation. These policies influence not only men's and women's decisions regarding their labour market activity but also organisational decision makers' (ODMs) expectations about their employees' availability to work and thus, their willingness to invest in their employees' human capital. Using a sample of over 13,000 individuals from 19 countries, we investigate the interaction between gender and social policies on human capital development practices. In line with statistical discrimination theory, which suggests that ODMs hold different expectations about female and male productivity, we find that paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are negatively associated with the provision of human capital development for women but not for men.     

Balancing family and work: The effect of cash benefits for working mothers

The aim of this paper is to measure the potential effect of a family policy introduced in Spain in 2003 that provides working mothers with a monthly cash benefit of 100 euros per child aged under 3 years. We explore the effect of the policy on eligible women's labour market participation. In the tradition of the policy evaluation literature we use a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) estimation approach. Our results support a small but significant positive effect of the policy. We find that since the implementation of the policy the labour market participation rate for mothers of children aged under 3 has risen by 3 percentage points compared to the rate for non-policy-eligible females. This represents 5% of their average labour market participation in 2002, the year before the policy was implemented. This overall policy effect is dominated by the effect of the policy among high school educated females.     

Household Shocks and Education Investments in Madagascar

This paper investigates the impact of exogenous shocks to household income, assets and labour supply on children's school attendance in Madagascar. The analysis uses a unique data set with 10 years of recall data on school attendance and household shocks. We find that the probability of a child dropping out of school increases significantly when the household experiences an illness, death or asset shock. We propose a test to distinguish whether the impact of shocks on school attendance can be attributed to credit constraints, labour market rigidities, or a combination of the two. The results suggest that credit constraints, rather than labour market rigidities, explain the inability of households in Madagascar to keep their children in school during times of economic stress.     

Connecting Time and Space: The Significance of Transformations in Women's Work in the City

Growing numbers of women with children living in western cities are entering the labour market, raising new questions about changes in the allocation of the tasks of social reproduction between household members and others and about the effects of the increasing time women now spend in the workplace. As Manuel Castells noted over 25 years ago, women's unpaid labour has long been essential, not only in the domestic arena, but also in patching together facilities separated in space. The spatial layout of cities, with its specialized and segregated land‐uses, only works, he argued, if women's unpaid labour is available to connect urban locations. But many women now spend many more hours in the labour market, replacing their former domestic labour with a range of commodified goods and services as well as by help from a range of related or unrelated others, sometimes but not always remunerated and/or by state‐provided or supported services. This article examines the consequences of the growth of women's employment in Britain and the concomitant decline of the old breadwinner family, the growth of workfare policies that assume all individuals are available for waged work and the rise of commodified caring. The arguments are illustrated by empirical examples from interviews undertaken with middle‐class mothers in waged work in London and Manchester in the UK.     

Land Market Restrictions,Women's Labour Force Participation and Wages in a Rural Economy

We analyse the effects of land market restrictions on the rural labour market outcomes for women. The existing literature emphasizes two mechanisms through which land restrictions can affect economic outcomes: collateral value of land, and (in)security of property rights. Our analysis focuses on an alternative mechanism where land restrictions increase costs of migration out of villages. Testable prediction of collateral channel is that wages remain unchanged, but the effects on labour force participation are ambiguous. Insecurity of property rights in land reduces labour force participation, but leaves wages undisturbed. In contrast, if land restrictions work primarily through higher migration costs, labour force participation increases, while wages decline. For identification, we exploit a natural experiment in Sri Lanka where historical malaria played a unique role in land policy. We provide robust evidence of a positive effect of land restrictions on women's labour force participation, but a negative effect on female wages. The empirical results thus contradict a collateral or insecure property rights effect, but supports migration costs as the primary mechanism.     

Towards an understanding of the female expatriate experience in Europe

The increased participation of women in the workforce has been one of the major changes in the structuring of the labour force in recent years, and it is anticipated that this trend will continue. Despite growing numbers of women in senior domestic management roles, the participation rates of women in international management remains low across the globe. In Europe, international management has generally been a masculine preserve. Much of our knowledge of female expatriation comes from North America and is based on the experiences of female managers working for North American MNCs. This article builds on that base of understanding but highlights a growing stream of research into female expatriation in Europe, which remains largely “invisible” to specialists outside Europe. Given the paucity of empirical research in this area in general and the need for a more international understanding of the phenomena which can arise from examining different contexts, the article suggests that researchers outside Europe may find useful insights in this paper which pulls together and summarises what we know from the existing research on female expatriates in Europe and offers some avenues for future research.     

Impacts of Prime‐age Adult Mortality on Labour Supply: Evidence from Adolescents and Women in South Africa*

This paper examines the impact of prime‐age adult mortality on the transition made by adolescents from school to the labour market and on female adult labour force participation decisions in South Africa. We find, first, that deaths of prime‐age adults significantly increase both male and female adolescents’ labour force participation as they stop their schooling. Secondly, the death of prime‐age adults in general also decreases school enrolment ex ante. Thirdly, female adults tend to join the labour force following the death of prime‐age adult males. These findings imply that prime‐age adult mortality increases labour supply and disrupts human capital formation.     

New Men and New Women? A Comparison of Paid Work Propensities from a Panel Data Perspective

British Household Panel Survey data for waves 1–5 (1991–5) is used to compare paid work participation rates of men and women. Year-on-year persistence in paid work propensities is high, but greater for men than women. Non-work persistence is higher for women. Using panel data probit regression models, we also investigate why men's and women's participation rates differ, comparing the roles of differences in observable characteristics and differences in rates of return to these characteristics, while also controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Most of the difference in participation rates is accounted for by the differences in returns associated with the presence of children, especially young ones.     

Did working families' tax credit work? The impact of in-work support on labour supply in Great Britain

In-work benefits are promoted as a way to make low-income families better off without introducing adverse work incentives. In 1999, the structure of in-work benefits in the UK changed, and their generosity almost doubled, through the introduction of Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC). With micro-data from before and after its introduction, a structural model of labour supply and programme participation estimates that, by 2002, WFTC had increased labour supply of lone mothers by around 5.1 percentage points, slightly reduced labour supply of mothers in couples by 0.6 percentage points, and increased the labour supply of fathers in couples by 0.8 percentage points, compared with the programme that preceded it. Other tax and benefit reforms contemporaneous with WFTC acted to reduce the labour supply of parents, though. Without any form of in-work benefit in the UK, labour force participation by lone mothers would be around 45 percent, rather than the 55 per cent we now observe. Participating in family credit, the UK's in-work programme before October 1999, conferred a utility loss as well as a utility gain from the extra income, but this utility cost of participation was lower in the final year of WFTC than under previous programmes for lone mothers, and no different for individuals in couples: this in itself induced more lone mothers to work.     

Dual careers,time‐use and satisfaction levels: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

This article empirically examines time‐use and its impact on satisfaction levels among dual career households in a post‐industrial economy, the UK. Analysis explores the 1993–2009 British Household Panel Survey using panel probit regression. The evidence reveals distinctions in time‐use relative to gender, occupations and employment sector. Long hours persist among managers and professionals. The uneven division of household labour, further, continues to burden women with extensive amounts of housework and care. Satisfaction with working hours and amount/use of leisure time are lower among women, especially the public sector professionals. Provision of care, occupation and partner employment characteristics represent important satisfaction determinants present among women, while income (including partner's income) only has relevance among men. Housework does not itself generate dissatisfaction. It is the overload of household tasks, due to inequality in the household division of labour, which constrains many highly skilled working women reducing satisfaction with time‐use and life overall.     

Egyptian men working abroad: Labour supply responses by the women left behind

Female labour force participation has remained low in Egypt. This paper examines whether male international migration provides a leeway for women to enter the labour market and/or to increase their labour supply. In line with previous studies, we find a decrease in wage work particularly in urban areas. However, women living in rural areas and affected by migration are much more likely to be employed in non-wage activities (i.e. unpaid family work) and subsistence work compared to women in non-migrant households. Furthermore, we find evidence that this labour supply response is driven by the household's need to replace the migrant's labour rather than by a loosening of a financing constraint on family enterprises made possible by the flow of remittances.