Female employment and the slowing of recoveries
In the 1970s, the gender gap in employment was shrinking rapidly. Over time as the gap shrunk, convergence has slowed down and since about 2000, the gender gap in employment has largely plateaued. In this paper, Fukui et al. argue that recent slow recoveries could be attributed to a slowdown in the speed of the convergence of female employment towards male employment. This is an interesting result as their model finds that female convergence explains at least 70% of the slowdown of the recovery in employment rates in recent business cycles. Finally, and contrary to recent research, they find that the crowding-out effect, whereby higher female employment implies a displacement of men from the labor force, is very small.
Women, Wealth Effects, and Slow Recoveries
Authors: Masao Fukui, Emi Nakamura, Jon Steinsson
From: MIT, UC Berkeley
A Beckerian view of the marriage market
In this paper Bertrand et al. develop a model where a marriage gap between skilled and unskilled women emerges endogenously as a consequence of skilled women’s higher market wages and the different time allocation decisions these higher market wages generate. The key force behind the emergence of this marriage gap is gender norms that generate spousal disagreement over the provision of the household public good, namely children. Because skilled women have higher wages, they provide less of that public good relative to unskilled women. This makes them less attractive to potential partners in the marriage market, at least for some values of the wage rate. Thus, a woman’s education decision might be associated with a trade-off between a higher return in the labor market and a lower marriage probability. Finally, a lower fraction of women will be willing to acquire higher education in more gender conservative countries as they anticipate facing greater barriers in the marriage market if they become more skilled.
Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap Between Skilled and Unskilled Women
Authors: Marianne Bertrand, Patricia Cortes, Claudia Olivetti, Jessica Pan
From: University of Chicago, Boston University, Dartmouth College, National University of Singapore
