Women at Work An Economic Perspective

by Boeri, Tito; Del Boca, Daniela; Pissarides, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780199281879
• ISBN10: 0199281874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Covering employment and wage gender gaps, participation of women, fertility, and the welfare of children, this insightful volume discusses how the trend towards greater participation of women in labour markets interacts with gender differences in pay. It focusses on the scope for increasingthe number of women in the labour force without negatively affecting the development of their children.The need for this volume has become self evident. At the Spring 2000 Lisbon meeting of the European Council the Heads of Governments of the EU agreed to accelerate the greater participation of women in the labour market. However, neither in Lisbon nor in the subsequent Spring European Councils ofthe EU was it discussed how to achieve this target - and the trade-offs that would be involved in increasing the participation of women in paid employment.Policies for increasing participation must involve some losers, or they would already have been implemented everywhere. If distributional considerations and policy trade-offs are ignored, it is only possible to set virtual targets, neglecting the reforms needed to achieve them. This book sets out abetter informed policy debate about these issues, paving the way to more realistic targets and ways to achieve them.

Author Biography

Tito Boeri is Professor of Economics at Bocconi University, Milan, and Director of the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti. He is research fellow of CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research) and of the Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. He obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from New York University and was senior economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 1987 to 1996. Daniela Del Boca is Professor of Economics at the University of Turin and is Director of the newly established Center for Household Income, Labour and Demographic economics (CHILD). She has previously been President of the European Society of Population Economists, Professor at the Politechnic of Milan, Visiting Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and Visiting Professor at New York University and Johns Hopkins. Christopher Pissarides is Professor of Economics at London School of Economics. He has held visiting positions at Yale University, UCLA, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. Christopher is currently a specialist adviser to House of Commons Treasury Committee, a member of the Cyprus Monetary Policy Committee and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and IZA.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	x
List of Tables	xii
List of Contributors	xiv
Introduction. More Women at Work in Europe	1	(6)
Tito Boeri
Part I. Women in the Labor Force: How Well is Europe Doing?	7	(114)
Christopher Pissarides
Pietro Garibaldi
Claudia Olivetti
Barbara Petrongolo
Etienne Wasmer
Introduction	9	(3)
Women's Employment Patterns: Some Facts	12	(13)
Women's role in overall employment growth	19	(6)
Explanations behind Women's Employment Patterns	25	(14)
The rise of female employment: a brief review of explanations	25	(5)
Explaining cross-country differences	30	(9)
Job Segregation	39	(26)
The data	41	(3)
Who holds atypical jobs?	44	(10)
Preferences for atypical jobs	54	(4)
Wages in atypical jobs	58	(5)
Conclusions	63	(2)
Wage Gaps	65	(18)
The evolution of the gender wage gap in the US	66	(1)
Cross-country evidence on the gender wage gap	67	(5)
Explaining the cross-country evidence on the gender wage gap	72	(3)
The importance of sample selection	75	(2)
Cross-country institutional differences and the gender wage gap	77	(5)
Conclusions	82	(1)
Rising Female Participation: The Consequences for Other Workers	83	(13)
What do we know?	83	(3)
Measuring experience in the labor market	86	(5)
Measuring crowding-out in the youth labor market	91	(4)
Conclusions	95	(1)
What Policy Should Do	96	(25)
Comments	105	(16)
Florence Jaumotte	105	(4)
Richard Rogerson	109	(6)
References	115	(6)
Part II. Women's Participation in the Labor Market and Fertility: The Effects of Social Policies	121	(154)
Rolf Aaberge
Ugo Colombino
Daniela Del Boca
John Ermisch
Marco Francesconi
Silvia Pasqua
Steinar Strom
Introduction	123	(2)
Labor Supply and Fertility in Europe and the US	125	(29)
Fertility and labor supply: their relationship	125	(2)
Temporal patterns and cross-country differences	127	(4)
The characteristics of the labor market	131	(4)
From maternity to parental leave	135	(3)
Childcare systems	138	(3)
Child benefits	141	(1)
Family patterns and family structure	142	(4)
Comparing the effects of social policies	146	(2)
Participation and fertility decisions: empirical results from ECHP	148	(2)
Conclusions	150	(4)
Appendix 8.A	151	(2)
Appendix 8.B	153	(1)
Parental Employment and Children's Welfare	154	(40)
Parental employment and children's wellbeing: relationship concerns	154	(5)
The impact of parental employment on children's wellbeing: measuring and evaluating the effects	159	(4)
A selective review of results	163	(22)
Cognitive development and early childhood outcomes	163	(11)
Educational attainment	174	(2)
Other outcomes	176	(2)
Summary of results and discussion	178	(7)
The importance of other family processes and decisions during childhood	185	(7)
Family income	186	(2)
Parental joblessness and financial difficulty	188	(1)
Parental education	189	(1)
Lone parenthood	190	(2)
Conclusions	192	(2)
Changes in Labor Market Participation and Family Income Distribution	194	(11)
How do women's and men's work affect income distribution?	194	(3)
Dual-earner and single-earner households	197	(3)
Inequality in women's and men's earnings distribution	200	(2)
Intra-household income distribution	202	(2)
Conclusions	204	(1)
Taxes, Transfers, Labor Supply and Household Welfare	205	(32)
Motivations for studying labor supply and taxation	205	(2)
Some evidence in Europe and the US	207	(2)
Fiscal and social policies: modeling the behavioral responses	209	(3)
Measuring social welfare: efficiency and equality	212	(1)
Thinking about tax system reforms: an exercise for Italy	213	(24)
Comparing three reform proposals	215	(10)
Looking for the best	225	(2)
The reforms and female participation and fertility	227	(2)
Appendix 11.A: Modeling household labor supply	229	(3)
Appendix 11.B: Social welfare functions	232	(2)
Equality of opportunity as a benchmark for evaluation of social policy	234	(3)
What Policy Should Do	237	(38)
Comments	240	(25)
Giovanni Andrea Cornia	240	(4)
Valerie Lechene	244	(5)
References	249	(16)
Final Remarks	265	(10)
Women in the labor market and in the Lisbon strategy	265	(3)
Giuseppe Bertola
A jobless and childless Europe?	268	(7)
Gosta Esping-Andersen
Index	275