Gender,Work Burden,and Mental Health in Post-Reform China

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how total work burden, including paid work and unpaid care work, affects the mental health of prime-age, employed women and men in urban China. Based on the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), regression results indicate that total work burden is negatively related to the mental health of both men and women, consistent with the idea that additional work hours reduce time available for rest and leisure. Women have longer working hours and are more likely to be time poor than men, and this gender inequality in total work burden contributes to the gender gap in mental health. The relationships between the components of total work burden – paid and unpaid work – and mental health shed further light on the strength of gender norms and the barriers to redistribution of unpaid work from women to men necessary to reduce the gender gap in mental health.     

Gender Norms and the Gendered Distribution of Total Work in Latin American Households

This study uses time-use survey data for Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador (from 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively) to analyze differences between countries in terms of the gendered distribution of total work, which includes both paid and unpaid work. It explores whether the variations in the total time worked by women and men, and, particularly, the gender gap unfavorable to women, can be explained by substantive national differences in gendered social norms. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS; 2010–14), this study computes a gender norms index to measure cross-country differences in gender norms. It finds that more egalitarian countries exhibit higher levels of equality in the gendered distribution of total work.     

Unpaid Care Work's Interference with Paid Work and the Gender Earnings Gap in China

This paper examines the effects of unpaid care work on the earnings of men and women in China by using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, the country's first, large-scale time-use survey. The study introduces three indicators to measure the degree to which unpaid care work may “interfere” with paid work, either by directly disrupting it or by being intertwined with it. The regression estimates show that while the amount of time spent on unpaid care work negatively affects the earnings of both men and women, the interference of unpaid work with paid work lowers earnings more for women than for men. Quantitatively, the gender differences in the time spent on unpaid care work and its interference with paid work account for 28 percent of the gender earnings gap in China.     

Gender Inequality in the Spanish Public Pension System

This contribution studies revenue sharing in the public pension system in Spain from a gender perspective, revealing that differences are evident in the percentage of men and women entitled to different types of pensions and in the average fiscal amount per pension for men and women. Using 2010 data, the study analyzes how labor market conditions are reflected in pension type and amount for women pensioners, yielding two important conclusions: the income of women pensioners decreases, relative to men, with age; and the degree of inequality of pensions among women is lower than that among men. These gender differences owe to the contributory character of the system, which reproduces the labor market inequalities of both genders – inequalities that ultimately derive from the social division of roles in which women remain responsible for unpaid care work. This conclusion is consistent with similar studies on other European countries and world regions.     

Gender-Based Occupational Choices and Family Responsibilities: The Gender Wage Gap in Italy

This paper explores the relationship between the gender division of labor, occupational choices, and the gender wage gap in Italy. In Italy, cultural factors and low availability of formal childcare services define gender roles that are generally based on the male breadwinner model, in which childcare is almost completely entrusted to women. The analysis is carried out through an extension of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and is based on data from the 2007 Italian National Institute for Workers’ Professional Development (ISFOL). The results are consistent with gender discrimination on wages and suggest that women’s occupational paths are often an outcome of limited choices, and that women’s unpaid domestic work negatively interferes with the energy women can put into paid work. These findings support the need to ensure gender equality in and out of the labor market, especially through deep changes in Italian social norms and through the development of formal childcare.     

Gender Patterns and Value of Unpaid Care Work: Findings From China's First Large‐Scale Time Use Survey

Using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, this paper examines the gender patterns of time allocation over paid work, unpaid care work, and non‐work activity and estimates the monetary value of unpaid care work. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) technique is applied to explore the tradeoff between the three types of activity. The estimates show that, holding constant individual characteristics and regional effects, the total work time of women is higher than that of men by 7 hours per week in the rural sector and by 10.5 hours per week in the urban sector. The monetary value of unpaid care work is estimated by five methods. Depending on the method used, the value assigned to unpaid care work varies from 25 to 32 percent of China's GDP, from 52 to 66 percent of final consumption, and from 63 to 80 percent of the gross products of tertiary industry.     

A quantitative theory of the gender gap in wages

This paper measures how much of the gender wage gap over the life cycle is due to the fact that working hours are lower for women than for men. We build a quantitative theory of fertility, labor supply, and human capital accumulation decisions to measure gender differences in human capital investments over the life cycle. We assume that there are no gender differences in the human capital technology and calibrate this technology using wage–age profiles of men. The calibration of females assumes that children involves a forced reduction in hours of work that falls on females rather than on males and that there is an exogenous gender gap in hours of work. We find that our theory accounts for all of the increase in the gender wage gap over the life cycle in the NLSY79 data. The impact of children on the labor supply of females accounts for 56% and 45% of the increase in the gender wage gap over the life cycle among non-college and college females, while the rest is due to the exogenous gender differences in hours of work.     

The gender gap in university enrolment: Do parents play a role beyond investing in skills?

Young men are far less likely than women to attend university across most OECD countries. I use data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) to investigate this issue in the Canadian context, focusing on how parents might influence this gender gap. In particular, my goal is to isolate the incremental effect of parents’ valuations of education during the teenage years, holding constant the stock of skills acquired up to that point. To estimate this effect, I use a factor model based on a framework developed by Foley et al. (2014). My results confirm the importance of skills in determining the gender gap in university attendance. I also find that differences in the distribution of parental valuations of education account for 22% of the gender gap in the YITS data, pointing toward an important role that parents play, not accounted for in prior work.     

Equal Pay for Equal Work? Evidence from Sweden and a Comparison with Norway and the U.S.

Using a new data set covering most privately employed workers in Sweden, we compare gender wage differences to those previously reported for Norway and the U.S. The central finding is that the wage gap is small when comparing men and women working in the same type of occupation for the same employer. Segregation of men and women by occupation accounts for more of the gap in Sweden than in the other two countries. In all three countries, we find that segregation by occupation explains more than segregation by establishment, and that institutional changes over the past two decades aimed at improving the status of women had little effect on the gender wage gap.
JEL classification : J 16; J 71     

Dressing a ghost: size and value of unpaid family care

Unpaid family care work encompasses care and assistance provided by members of a household to other members. It is not considered to be a productive activity, and its exclusion from national account statistics contributes to keeping it invisible. We compare Italy and Poland, two countries that have taken different paths towards economic development, but share cultural features that influence unpaid family care work. We estimate the value of unpaid family care work with the opportunity cost and the market replacement cost methods, drawing data from the Polish and the Italian time use surveys and the IT-SILC. Our results show that unpaid family care work represents a substantial proportion of national production in both countries, ranging from 3.7 to 5% of GDP, depending on the method of estimation. The results likewise show that the size, gender distribution and value relative to GDP of unpaid family care work are remarkably similar, suggesting that, in spite of the different history of economic development in the two countries, cultural factors play a key role in determining family decisions that affect unpaid family care work.     

The Role of Gender in Further Training for Spanish Workers: Are Employers Making a Difference?

This paper investigates whether gender differentials in three categories of nonformal educational training that exist among Spanish employees – firm-financed training, public-financed training, and self-financed training – using the Survey on Adult Population Involvement in Learning Activities (AES), conducted in 2011. Although this study finds no gender gap in the probability of overall training participation, there is a negative gap in firm-financed training for women. Since this study does not detect differential preferences for training between Spanish women and men employees, gender discrimination in access to firm-financed training is at the root of this gender gap. While this discrimination does not extend to training returns among employees who take part in firm-financed courses, taking part in such training increases the probability of obtaining a salary increase or promotion, and it is discrimination in the access to firm-financed training that leaves Spanish women employees at a disadvantage.     

DO WOMEN MANAGE SMALLER FUNDS?

Based on a sample of 467 asset managers from four countries we robustly find that women manage smaller funds than men, despite tough competition in this industry. Interestingly, the gender gap exists only for managers of smaller funds, i.e. at the lower end of the hierarchy, as quantile regressions show. This is inconsistent with the glass ceiling hypothesis. Going further, this gender gap is limited to large firms. Explanations may refer to large firms using market power in the area of smaller funds or to ‘visibility’ among top asset managers protecting against unequal treatment of the sexes.     

Gender Segregation and Income Differences in Nicaragua

Despite having higher average education levels, Nicaraguan women still earn much less than men. Furthermore, the country has one of the highest levels of occupational gender segregation in Latin America. This paper aims to explain the gender income gap in Nicaragua, taking into account individual characteristics, engagement in specific occupations and sectors, and geographical location. Using a multilevel framework, the study finds that while a considerable part of the income gap can be explained by women’s employment in occupations and sectors with low remuneration, another substantial part of this gap is attributable to the prevalence of patriarchal gender norms – and thus cannot be explained by human capital factors. These results show that understanding labor market segregation is vital for comprehending the perseverance of the gender income gap, and they further imply that women’s progress in breaching the gender stereotypes in Nicaragua is still limited.     

Capital market integration and gender inequality

This study explores the effects of globalization on gender inequality. Specifically, we describe how, in terms of capital market integration, globalization alters the gender gap in wage rates through changes in labor demand for capital‐intensive sectors. Consequently, via changes in the bargaining positions of men and women, globalization leads to opposite effects on the couple's labor supply and fertility decisions in capital‐importing and capital‐exporting countries. Moreover, by considering the properties of the industrial structures of capital‐importing and capital‐exporting countries, we show that globalization induces empirically observed declines in fertility rates throughout the world.     

Gender Wage Gap: Some Recent Evidences from India

Gender wage inequality is a chronic socioeconomic malice in developed as well as in developing countries. This paper describes the outcomes of our study on the estimation of gender wage gap in the Indian labour market, using the 68th Round NSSO employment–unemployment data. The study uses Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique and Heckman two-step methodology, for removal of selectivity bias in the sample data, to measure the components of total gender wage gap, viz. (1) occupational segregation (explained by economic rationale) and (2) direct discrimination (not explained by economic rationale). The analysis indicates that the maximum direct discrimination is for job-related factors, such as industry type which are controlled by employers. The majority of the Indian employers today are men, which may be the reason for the insensitivity to the chronic direct discrimination against women in workplaces. The study also indicates that most of the explained gender wage gap is due to lower skill and experience amongst women. The findings suggest that besides labour law reforms for ensuring gender neutrality in workplaces, focused government policies for promoting women entrepreneurship and skill development of women are urgently required for reducing the gender wage gap in India.

     

Wage differences between Austrian men and women: <Emphasis Type="Italic">semper idem?</Emphasis>

In most OECD countries, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed during the past two decades. Developments of the last 20 years, e.g., increased labour market attachment of women or the introduction of equal pay laws, may have reduced the gender wage gap. We investigate the extent, persistence, and socio-economic determinants of the gender wage gap in Austria, for the years 1983 and 1997. Using wage decomposition techniques, we find that the average gender wage gap was almost as high in 1997 as it was in 1983. Not accounting for differences, the gender wage gap dropped from 25.5 to 23.3% of men’s wages. Taking observable differences between men and women into account, we estimate that the mean gender wage gap that cannot be explained, i.e., discrimination against women, dropped from 17 to 14% of men’s wages. A decomposition of the gender wage gap over time indicates that both returns to human capital and less discrimination were responsible for the narrowing of the gender wage gap.

A measurement of the extent of market imperfections between markets and applications

This study estimates the size and value of unpaid family caretaking activities at a European level. While at a country level several studies are available, a comprehensive evaluation for Europe as a whole was missing so far, mainly due to data limitations. This article fills this gap using a method that merges the information of the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) with the Harmonised European Time Use Surveys (HETUS). Monetary values of unpaid family domestic work and unpaid family childcare work are obtained applying both the opportunity cost and the market replacement approaches. For Europe as a whole, the total value of these activities ranges between 17% and 31.6% of the EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP), depending on the applied methodology. The national values of these activities are discussed and an interpretation of the country and gender differentials in family caretaking costs is given in terms of differences in culture, economic development and welfare state.     

Minimum Wages and the Gender GAP in Pay: New Evidence from the United Kingdom and Ireland

Women are disproportionately in low‐paid work compared to men so, in the absence of rationing effects on their employment, they should benefit the most from minimum wage policies. This study examines the change in the gender wage gap around the introduction of minimum wages in Ireland and the United Kingdom (U.K.). Using survey data for the two countries, we develop a decomposition of the change in the gender differences in wage distributions around the date of introduction of minimum wages. We separate out “price” effects attributed to minimum wages from “employment composition” effects. A significant reduction of the gender gap at low wages is observed after the introduction of the minimum wage in Ireland, while there is hardly any change in the U.K. Counterfactual simulations show that the difference between countries may be attributed to gender differences in non‐compliance with the minimum wage legislation in the U.K.     

Race,Affirmative Action,and Women's Employment in US Highway Construction

This paper analyzes employment hours, supplemented by interview data, from large highway construction sites in Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland in the 1980s and 1990s. This study suggests that affirmative action positively affects the employment of women in construction and where there is more pressure, there are strongr results. Second, white women and women of color tend to work in trades that reflect the existing racial hierarchies among men. Therefore race as well as gender should be reflected in the design and measurement of the impacts of employment programs. Community organizing, advocacy for women and men of color, judicial oversight and positive efforts by unions and employers are still critical to bridging the gap between policy intentions and outcomes.     

Globalisation and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Labour Market in India

This paper examines quantitative and qualitative dimensions of employment issues in India from gender lens. Inequality in quantitative aspects have been analysed gender gap in work participation, composition and structure of employment. The study finds that female work participation in India has declined sharply despite faster economic growth and improvement in female literacy outcomes. The magnitude of decline is sharper in case of illiterate, women from less privileged class and rural backgrounds. Similarly, even after two decades of economic reform, female workers are highly concentrated in low productive, less remunerative and unpaid family labour category of self employment activities. Considering the qualitative dimension of jobs, the paper finds that the condition of female workers are more vulnerable as they are highly concentrated in informal sector and informal jobs with no employment security, no social security, and are being paid relatively lower wages compared to male workers in most of the sub-sector. The paper argues for an urgent policy intervention to ensure access to decent jobs and to provide protection to these vulnerably placed women workers.