Abstract
AbstractWe investigate the changes in women’s participation patterns across 15 EU countries over the last 20 years using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. Our findings show that the observed trends in female participation differ substantially both across countries and across different groups of women. We explore such heterogeneity in trends by looking at the effects of policies and labour market institutional factors on the participation of women with different family and individual characteristics. Our estimates reveal a role of policies and institutions that is stronger than what has so far been assessed. Labour market institutions and family-oriented policies explain almost 25% of the actual increase in labour force participation for young women, and more than 30% for highly educated women. Surprisingly, changes in the institutional and policy settings contribute less in explaining the participation of low-skilled women. We also find that reforming the institutional framework towards a model of “flexicure” labour market is effective in enhancing women labour supply only when deregulation is accompanied by sufficient social compensation.JEL ClassificationJ11, J21, J2
Highlights
The importance given to the protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms in the European Community Treaties has changed considerably since the European venture was first launched
We test two main hypotheses: H1 : social policies for the support of families with young children and dependent elderly persons positively correlate with female participation by weakening the trade-off between informal care and paid work and positively affecting female labour market participation; H2 : changes in the institutional setting towards a model characterized by lower barriers to hiring and firing combined with a higher social protection positively correlate with female labour market activity and this correlation is larger for women who are more involved in family occupations
Our results indicate that social policies and labour market institutional characteristics explain a non-negligible percentage of the female labour market participation across European countries
Summary
The importance given to the protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms in the European Community Treaties has changed considerably since the European venture was first launched. We use a regression analysis to understand whether the impact of individual characteristics on labour market participation varies across time and across countries with different welfare regimes We further these results by exploiting a multi-level model specification to appreciate how institutional and policy factors affect the choice between unpaid family responsibility (child rearing and elderly care) and paid occupation for women in different age and education groups. We test two main hypotheses: H1 : social policies for the support of families with young children (including maternity, parental and childcare leaves) and dependent elderly persons positively correlate with female participation by weakening the trade-off between informal care and paid work and positively affecting female labour market participation; H2 : changes in the institutional setting towards a model characterized by lower barriers to hiring and firing combined with a higher social protection (passive labour market policies and active labour market policies) positively correlate with female labour market activity and this correlation is larger for women who are more involved in family (unpaid) occupations. We will refer to the variables capturing the characteristics of institutional context and policies as “macro” factors
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