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Bloome, Deirdre, Derek Burk & Leslie McCall (2019): Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality between U.S. Men and Women. 1970-2010. In: American Journal of Sociology, Jg. 124, H. 5, S. 1413-1467. DOI:10.1086/702278

Abstract

"Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be 'zero-sum,' with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. This article introduces a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incorporates multiple population subgroups and income sources beyond couples' labor earnings. Using Current Population Survey data, the authors find that women's self-reliance increased dramatically, as expected, but men's declined only slightly. The authors decompose these trends into changes in family structure and redistribution, which increased and decreased self-reliance, respectively, for men and women, though more for women. Labor market shifts, by contrast, were asymmetric and opposing, reducing men's self-reliance much less than they increased women's. The authors' approach opens opportunities for new insight into both gender inequality and the income attainment process." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Buera, Francisco J., Joseph P. Kaboski & Min Qiang Zhao (2019): The rise of services. The role of skills, scale, and female labor supply. In: Journal of Human Capital, Jg. 13, H. 2, S. 157-187. DOI:10.1086/702926

Abstract

"This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the growth in the service share in the United States. We model households that make decisions on home and market production of services that vary in their skill intensity at any point in time and vary in their optimal scale over time. We also allow for skill- and sector-biased technology progress. The benchmark model fully accounts for the rise in the service share, with the rising scale of services, rising demand for skill-intensive output, and skill-biased technical change all playing dominant roles. Furthermore, the model with multiperson households confirms that the essential findings of our benchmark model are robust to demographic considerations. It can explain two-thirds of the increase in female labor supply, which also plays a role in services growth." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Conroy, Tessa (2019): The kids are alright: working women, schedule flexibility and childcare. In: Regional Studies. Journal of the Regional Studies Association, Jg. 53, H. 2, S. 261-271. DOI:10.1080/00343404.2018.1462478

Abstract

"This paper tests the effects of children and childcare on women's employment and entrepreneurial outcomes at the county level for the United States. Given that policies and economic development strategies are often implemented across local and regional jurisdictions, this regional study contributes to the literature by considering access to childcare in relation to locally aggregated female labour market outcomes by sector. The results, which address potential endogeneity, indicate that young children and childcare affect female employment differently depending on the sector. The results are consistent with women choosing the public sector and self-employment over the private sector to accommodate the demands of childrearing." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Cortés, Patricia & Jessica Pan (2019): When time binds: Substitutes for household production, returns to working long hours, and the skilled gender wage gap. In: Journal of labor economics, Jg. 37, H. 2, S. 351-398. DOI:10.1086/700185

Abstract

"We provide evidence that constraints that prevent highly-skilled women from working long hours hinder gender pay equality. We show that relaxing one such constraint by increasing the supply of substitutes for household production - proxied by intercity variation in predicted low-skilled immigration - increases the relative earnings of women in occupations that disproportionately reward overwork. Lowskilled immigration inflows induce young women to enter occupations with higher returns to overwork and shift women toward higher quantiles of the male wage distribution. The share of women in the top decile remains unaffected, suggesting that other barriers prevent women from reaching the very top." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Le, Nga, Wim Groot, Sonila M. Tomini & Florian Tomini (2019): Effects of health insurance on labour supply. A systematic review. In: International journal of manpower, Jg. 40, H. 4, S. 717-767. DOI:10.1108/IJM-02-2018-0038

Abstract

"Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of empirical evidence on the labour market effects of health insurance from the supply side.
Design/methodology/approach
The study covers the largest peer-reviewed and working paper databases for labour economics and health studies. These include Web of Science, Google Scholar, Pubmed and the most popular economics working paper sources such as NBER, ECONSTOR, IDEAS, IZA, SSRN, World Bank Working Paper Series. The authors follow the PRISMA 2009 protocol for systematic reviews.
Findings
The collection includes 63 studies. The outcomes of interest are the number of hours worked, the probability of employment, self-employment and the level of economic formalisation. The authors find that the current literature is vastly concentrated on the USA. Spousal coverage in the USA is associated with reduced labour supply of secondary earners. The effect of Medicaid in the USA on the labour supply of its recipients is ambiguous. The employment-coverage link is an important determinant of the labour supply of people with health problems and self-employment decisions. Universal coverage may create either an incentive or a disincentive to work depending on the design of the system. Finally, evidence on the relationship between health insurance and the level of economic formalisation in developing countries is fragmented and limited.
Practical implications
This study reviews the existing literature on the labour market effects of health insurance from the supply side. The authors find a large knowledge gap in emerging economies where health coverage is expanding. The authors also highlight important literature gaps that need to be filled in different themes of the topic.
Originality/value
This is the first systematic review on the topic which is becoming increasingly relevant for policy makers in developing countries where health coverage is expanding." (Author's abstract, © Emerald Group) ((en))

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Manchester, Colleen Flaherty, Lisa M. Leslie & Patricia C. Dahm (2019): Bringing home the bacon: The relationships among breadwinner role, performance, and pay. In: Industrial relations, Jg. 58, H. 1, S. 46-85. DOI:10.1111/irel.12225

Abstract

"We evaluate the relationships among breadwinner role, performance, and pay. Differences in pay are present despite limited differences in performance. We find a pay premium for primary-breadwinner employees across gender, yet a pay penalty for secondary-breadwinners employees only for women, suggesting an asymmetric relationship among breadwinner role, gender, and pay." (Author's abstract, Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons) ((en))

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Rogerson, Richard & Johanna Wallenius (2019): Household time use among older couples: Evidence and implications for labor supply parameters. In: The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Jg. 134, H. 2, S. 1079-1120. DOI:10.1093/qje/qjy032

Abstract

"Using the Consumption Activities Mail Survey (CAMS) module in the HRS, we document how individual time allocations change when one or more household members transitions from full-time work to not working. We find that the ratio of home production to leisure time is approximately constant for both family members. Using a model of household labor supply to understand the implications of this finding, we conclude that the elasticity of substitution between the leisure of the two members is quite large. This elasticity plays a key role in models of household labor supply and is important for understanding how changes in relative wages and taxes affect household labor supply." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Bick, Alexander, Bettina Brüggemann, Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Hannah Paule-Paludkiewicz (2018): Long-term changes in married couples' labor supply and taxes. Evidence from the US and Europe since the 1980s. (IZA discussion paper 11824), Bonn, 35 S.

Abstract

"We document the time-series of employment rates and hours worked per employed by married couples in the US and seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) from the early 1980s through 2016. Relying on a model of joint household labor supply decisions, we quantitatively analyze the role of nonlinear labor income taxes for explaining the evolution of hours worked of married couples over time, using as inputs the full country- and year-specific statutory labor income tax codes. We further evaluate the role of consumption taxes, gender and educational wage premia, and the educational composition. The model is quite successful in replicating the time series behavior of hours worked per employed married woman, with labor income taxes being the key driving force. It does however capture only part of the secular increase in married women's employment rates in the 1980s and early 1990s, suggesting an important role for factors not considered in this paper. We will make the non-linear tax codes used as an input into the analysis available as a user-friendly and easily integrable set of Matlab codes." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Binder, Ariel J. & David Lam (2018): Is there a male breadwinner norm? The hazards of inferring preferences from marriage market outcomes. (IZA discussion paper 11693), Bonn, 49 S.

Abstract

"Spousal characteristics such as age, height, and earnings are often used in social science research to infer social preferences. For example, a 'male taller' norm has been inferred from the fact that fewer wives are taller than their husbands than would occur with random matching. The large proportion of husbands out-earning their wives has similarly been cited as evidence for a 'male breadwinner' norm. This paper argues that it is difficult and potentially misleading to infer social preferences about an attribute from observed marital sorting on that attribute. We show that positive assortative matching on an attribute is consistent with a wide variety of underlying preferences, including 'female taller' or 'female breadwinner' norms. Given prevailing gender gaps in height and earnings, positive sorting implies it will be rare for women to be taller than, or earn more than, their husbands - even if there is no underlying preference for shorter or lowerearning wives. In an empirical application, we show that simulations which sort couples positively on permanent earnings can largely replicate the observed distribution of spousal earnings differences in US Census data. Further, we show that an apparent sharp drop in the distribution function at the point where the wife begins to out-earn the husband results from a mass of couples earning identical incomes, a mass which we argue is not evidence of a norm for higher-earning husbands." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Choi, Sekyu & Arnau Valladares-Esteban (2018): The marriage unemployment gap. In: The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, Jg. 18, H. 1, S. 1-14. DOI:10.1515/bejm-2016-0060

Abstract

"In this paper we document that married individuals face a lower unemployment rate than their single counterparts. We refer to this phenomenon as the marriage unemployment gap. Despite dramatic demographic changes in the labor market over the last decades, this gap has been remarkably stable both for men and women. Using a flow-decomposition exercise, we assess which transition probabilities (across labor force states) are behind this phenomenon: For men, the main driver is the higher job losing probabilities faced by single workers. For females, the participation margin also plays a crucial role." (Author's abstract, © De Gruyter) ((en))

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Depew, Briggs & Joseph Price (2018): Marriage and the economic status of women with children. In: Review of Economics of the Household, Jg. 16, H. 4, S. 1049-1061. DOI:10.1007/s11150-017-9395-8

Abstract

"Marriage is positively correlated with income, and women with children are much less likely to be in poverty if they are married. Selection into marriage makes it difficult to assess whether these correlations represent a causal effect of marriage. One instrument for marriage proposed in past research is the gender of a woman's first child. We find that women who have a boy first are about 0.33 percentage points more likely to be married at any point in time. This effect operates through both increasing the probability that unmarried mothers marry the child's father and reducing the probability of divorce. We also find that women whose first child is a boy experience higher levels of family income and are less likely to receive welfare income, be below the poverty line, and receive food stamps. Estimates using child gender as an instrumental variable for marriage suggest that marriage plays a large causal role in improving the economic well-being of women with children and that these effects are largest among women at the lower end of the income distribution." (Author's abstract, © Springer-Verlag) ((en))

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Goldin, Claudia & Lawrence F. Katz (Hrsg.) (2018): Women working longer. Increased employment at older ages. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 304 S.

Abstract

"Today, more American women than ever before stay in the workforce into their sixties and seventies. This trend emerged in the 1980s, and has persisted during the past three decades, despite substantial changes in macroeconomic conditions. Why is this so? Today's older American women work full-time jobs at greater rates than women in other developed countries. In Women Working Longer, editors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz assemble new research that presents fresh insights on the phenomenon of working longer. Their findings suggest that education and work experience earlier in life are connected to women's later-in-life work. Other contributors to the volume investigate additional factors that may play a role in late-life labor supply, such as marital disruption, household finances, and access to retirement benefits. A pioneering study of recent trends in older women's labor force participation, this collection offers insights valuable to a wide array of social scientists, employers, and policy makers." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))
Contents:
I. Transitions over the Life Cycle
1. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz: Women Working Longer: Facts and Some Explanations
2. Nicole Maestas: The Return to Work and Women's Employment Decisions
3. Joanna N. Lahey: Understanding Why Black Women Are Not Working Longer
II. Family Matters: Caregiving, Marriage, and Divorce
4. Claudia Olivetti and Dana Rotz: Changes in Marriage and Divorce as Drivers of Employment and Retirement of Older Women
5. Sean Fahle and Kathleen McGarry: Women Working Longer: Labor Market Implications of Providing Family Care
III. Financial Considerations: Resources, Pensions, and Social Security
6. Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell: Older Women's Labor Market Attachment, Retirement Planning, and Household Debt
7. Maria D. Fitzpatrick: Teaching, Teachers' Pensions, and Retirement across Recent Cohorts of College-Graduate Women
8. Alexander Gelber, Adam Isen, and Jae Song: The Role of Social Security Benefits in the Initial Increase of Older Women's Employment: Evidence from the Social Security Notch
9. C. Adam Bee and Joshua Mitchell: The Hidden Resources of Women Working Longer: Evidence from Linked Survey-Administrative Data

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Herbst, Chris M. (2018): The impact of quality rating and improvement systems on families' child care choices and the supply of child care labor. In: Labour economics, Jg. 54, H. October, S. 172-190. DOI:10.1016/j.labeco.2018.08.007

Abstract

"Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are increasingly deployed by U.S. states to monitor and improve the quality of non-parental child care settings. By making information on program quality accessible to the public, QRIS attempts to alter parental preferences for quality-related attributes and encourage competition between providers. This paper draws on a variety of datasets to empirically characterize the way in which families and providers respond to the enactment of QRIS. Specifically, it exploits the differential timing in states' QRIS roll-out to examine two sets of outcomes: (i) families' child care choices and maternal employment and (ii) the supply and compensation of child care labor. Estimates from difference-in-differences models reveal several noteworthy findings. First, although QRIS induces families to shift from parental to non-parental care, economically disadvantaged families are more likely to use informal care, while their advantaged counterparts are more likely to use formal care. Second, QRIS increases the supply of high-skilled labor, particularly within the center-based sector. Third, all but the most highly-skilled child care workers experience rising compensation levels but also greater turnover. Finally, states that administer a wage compensation program alongside their QRIS experience larger increases in child care supply and compensation as well as lower turnover rates than states operating a QRIS in isolation." (Author's abstract, © 2018 Elsevier) ((en))

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Hu, Yang & Deniz Yucel (2018): What Fairness? Gendered Division of Housework and Family Life Satisfaction across 30 Countries. In: European Sociological Review, Jg. 34, H. 1, S. 92-105. DOI:10.1093/esr/jcx085

Abstract

"This article sheds new light on the role played by perceived fairness in configuring the relationship between gendered housework division and women's family life satisfaction across 30 countries. This is achieved by distinguishing and comparing two major dimensions of women's fairness comparison -- inter-gender relational comparison between partners and intra-gender referential comparison with other women from the same society. Analysing data from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme, we find that women's family life satisfaction is adversely affected by both a lack of relational fairness and unfavourable referential comparison, which operate independently of each other. Supporting the 'self-serving' theory, women are found to rely more on one dimension of fairness comparison to assess their family life satisfaction when they compare unfavourably rather than favourably in the other dimension. Country-level gender equality positively predicts the strength of the association between relational fairness and family life satisfaction. However, it does not seem to moderate the influence of referential comparison on family life satisfaction. In light of these results, scholars are urged to consider the perceived fairness of housework division as a plural construct, and to promulgate gender equality in multiple dimensions -- addressing not just inter-gender (in)equity but also intra-gender (in)equality -- to move the gender revolution forward." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Kolpashnikova, Kamila (2018): American househusbands: New time use evidence of gender display, 2003-2016. In: Social indicators research, Jg. 140, H. 3, S. 1259-1277. DOI:10.1007/s11205-017-1813-z

Abstract

"The traditional gendered division of household labor, where women did the bulk of all domestic labor, is eroding. The literature on housework, however, does not discuss the ways how to test for the non-traditional gender performances. Using the American Time Use Survey (2003-2016), the present study fills in this research gap and re-tests the relationship between relative earnings and the performance of housework. The analysis of women's time spent on domestic work shows that the traditional gender display explanation still applies to women's participation in routine tasks such as cooking and cleaning. Thus, breadwinning wives display gender neutralizing behavior and 'do' gender. On the other hand, American men show non-normative gender behavior in cooking and cleaning, but not in maintenance, where they still 'do' gender. This paper unveils a persistent traditional gender performance of women in housework and a new pattern for men's involvement in indoor routine housework." (Author's abstract, © Springer-Verlag) ((en))

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Lubotsky, Darren & Javaeria A. Qureshi (2018): Assessing the smooth rise in mothers' employment as children age. In: Journal of Human Capital, Jg. 12, H. 4, S. 604-639. DOI:10.1086/700077

Abstract

"We study the trajectory of maternal employment as children age and assess the factors underlying the smooth increase in mothers' employment as their youngest child ages. Our results indicate that the rising employment profile is largely not associated with falling child care costs, changes in nonlabor income, or marital dissolution as children age. Differences in educational attainment and wage opportunities are related to some of the increase in employment when children are under 4 years old but do not explain any after that age. We discuss explanations for the rising pattern of mothers' employment that might be consistent with our results." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Maestas, Nicole (2018): The return to work and women's employment decisions. (NBER working paper 24429), Cambrige, Mass., 40 S. DOI:10.3386/w24429

Abstract

"It is well documented that individuals in couples tend to retire around the same time. But because women tend to marry older men, this means many married women retire at younger ages than their husbands. This fact is somewhat at odds with lifecycle theory that suggests women might otherwise retire at later ages than men because they have longer life expectancies, and often have had shorter careers on account of childrearing. As a result, the opportunity cost of retirement - in terms of foregone potential earnings and accruals to Social Security wealth - may be larger for married women than for their husbands. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), I find evidence that the returns to additional work beyond mid-life are greater for married women than for married men. The potential gain in Social Security wealth alone is enough to place married women on nearly equal footing with married men in terms of Social Security wealth at age 70." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

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Park, Seonyoung (2018): A structural explanation of recent changes in life-cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the United States. In: European Economic Review, Jg. 102, H. February, S. 129-168. DOI:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2017.11.006

Abstract

"This study documents and explains important changes in the life-cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the United States from the 1950s to more recent cohorts. The younger cohorts, relative to the 1950s, supply more labor at earlier stages of the life-cycle, delay motherhood to later stages without reducing the fertility rate, and upon childbearing, show a greater tendency to stay out of the labor force. In a life-cycle model for married couples in which a household makes decisions on fertility as well as labor supply, consumption, and savings, all the behavioral changes are jointly and quantitatively explained by a combination of changes in various labor supply/fertility determinants, with the increased returns (penalties) to work (non-work) experience being the dominant contributor. The results survive a series of robustness tests, including endogenizing education choice and assortative marriage." (Author's abstract, © 2017 Elsevier) ((en))

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Qian, Yue (2018): Educational Assortative Mating and Income Dynamics in Couples. A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective. In: Journal of Marriage and Family, Jg. 80, H. 3, S. 607-621. DOI:10.1111/jomf.12470

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Wu, Chunzan & Dirk Krueger (2018): How much consumption insurance in bewley models with endogenous family labor supply? (NBER working paper 24472), Cambrige, Mass., 59 S. DOI:10.3386/w24472

Abstract

"We show that a calibrated life-cycle two-earner household model with endogenous labor supply can rationalize the extent of consumption insurance against shocks to male and female wages, as estimated empirically by Blundell, Pistaferri and Saporta-Eksten (2016) in U.S. data. With additively separable preferences, 43% of male and 23% of female permanent wage shocks pass through to consumption, compared to the empirical estimates of 34% and 20%. With non-separable preferences the model predicts more consumption insurance, with pass-through rates of 29% and 16%. Most of the consumption insurance against permanent male wage shocks is provided through the labor supply response of the female earner." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))