Trade and Inequality-considerations of the Gini Coefficient, Female Employment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth

Abstract

With the deepening development of globalization and world trade, the gap between human individuals has been paid more and more attention by researchers in the field of economic and social sciences. However, a large body of literature focuses on the inequality caused by trade and globalization, while relatively ignoring other inequality factors, such as women's participation in the work force, especially in developing countries with low international influence. This paper refers to the exports of goods and services (% of GDP), the Gini coefficient, the share of female labor force in the total labor force, natural resource rental income (% of GDP), the natural logarithm of GDP per capita (economic growth) of 20 different developing countries with the highest trade volume in the world. The interrelation of exports of goods and services, as a percent of GDP, to the latter four is analyzed. A multiple regression model was set up. The model results show that a country's export of goods and services is not significantly correlated with the Gini coefficient, indicating that trade does not directly cause the expansion of a country's income gap; As the trade volume is significantly positively correlated with the number of female labor force, it indicates that the expansion of trade makes more women participate in the work force. For some countries, exports of goods and services are significantly and positively related to the country's natural resource rental income, while for some countries they are not. The export of goods and services has a significantly positive correlation effect on a country's economic growth.