How the 1978 Changes to the Foreign Domestic Workers Law in Singapore Increased the Female Labour Supply

Abstract

In 1978, Singapore was the rst country to introduce legislation allowing foreign domestic workers (e.g. maids) to work in the country with special visas. Though Singapore is often cited in the literature as a success story, there are no studies quantifying the impact of this legislation. In this paper, we use data from Singapore's Yearbook of Manpower Statistics between 1974 and 1985, to determine the impact of the 1978 legislation on the labour supply of Singaporean women. We nd that the labour supply of women a ected by this policy increased by between 3.8% and 6.2%.