Women's Earnings Research Articles

The timing of childbirth and the child wage-penalty in Japan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of timing of first childbirth on the child wage-penalty experienced by working mothers in Japan. There is an increasing age of first childbirth and increasing labor force participation rate of Japanese women: does it indicate that the presence of children causes women to pay a high price for motherhood? Design/methodology/approach This study estimates regression equations explaining the labor wages of working women, using a longitudinal data set from the Japan Household Panel Survey (the JHPS/KHPS 2004–2015). The fixed-effect method is utilized to control the bias that results from unobserved individual-specific characteristics. Findings The results indicate that having children negatively affects the wages of Japanese women. However, there is no variation in the child wage-penalty between early child bearers (age 27 years or younger) and late child bearers (older than 27 years). In addition, an additional year of post-birth work experience contributes equally to an additional year of pre-birth work experience on wage gains. These findings remain robust with an alternate cut-off age of 30-years old. Originality/value There is no previous study that relates the timing of the first birth to the motherhood wage-penalty in Japan. This study indicates that the timing of childbirth does not seem to be an important factor in the improvement of women’s labor wages. Thus, delaying childbirth may not be an optimal birth timing to maximize the lifetime earnings of Japanese women, especially for those who are career-minded.

Como mulheres e homens contribuem para a desigualdade da renda domiciliar per capita no Brasil

Resumo O artigo analisa como os rendimentos do trabalho de mulheres e homens afetam a distribuição da renda domiciliar per capita (RDPC) no Brasil, destacando os rendimentos de esposas e maridos dos casais que incluem a pessoa de referência do domicílio. Para isso é relevante examinar a correlação entre as escolaridades de esposas e maridos, pois esses são condicionantes básicos dos respectivos rendimentos do trabalho. Também são analisadas as contribuições de aposentadorias e pensões, sempre distinguindo esposas, maridos, demais homens e demais mulheres de cada domicílio. São utilizados dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) de 1992 a 2015. Verifica-se que a correlação entre escolaridades de maridos e esposas em 2015 é menor do que em 1995. Ao decompor a variação do índice de Gini da RDPC de 1995 a 2015 (ΔG = -0,086), verifica-se que as quatro parcelas relativas ao rendimento do trabalho e as quatro parcelas referentes a aposentadorias e pensões contribuem todas para a redução da desigualdade.

Women in Polish banking during the Second Polish Republic

Abstract This paper aims to analyse the employment of women in banking during the Second Polish Republic (i.e. interwar Poland). The banking sector was small in terms of employment. The number of people associated with this sector was 18.1 thousand in 1921 and 31.2 thousand in 1931, which accounted for 0.5-0.6% of all professionally active workers outside the agricultural sector. The banking community was dominated by men, the number of women working in banks was about 6.1 thousand in 1921 and 8.5 thousand in 1931 (30% of all human resources). This paper presents the nature of jobs performed by women, their positions and earnings. The presentation takes a number of forms: according to bank types, groups of voivodeships, size of the town and according to headquarters and branches. In all cases, the activities and earnings of women and men were compared.

Statistical analysis of gender pay gap in modern-day Russia

Purpose of the study. The study of gender disparity remains relevant for all countries, including the Russian Federation. The study of disparity in quantitative terms: the income distribution, in which the main source – wages, is of particular importance. In the analysis of the gender pay gap, the main factors are such characteristics as the level of education, work status, district, age and the period of the employee’s service. The purpose of this article is a statistical assessment of gender differentiation of wages in Russia based on empirical data and aggregated data from the Federal State Statistics Service. Particular attention is paid to the econometric approach to gender differences in wages. Materials and methods. As the main sources of information were data from the Federal State Statistics Service. In addition as the empirical base of the study, the data from the 27th wave of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) – Higher School of Economics were used. The study is based on a modified Mincer`s type equation. Models of the logarithm of wages for all employees, as well as separately for men and women, were developed. To clarify the range of factors, affecting wage differences, models were developed with either the age of the employees or the period of their service. In addition, the factor “socio-professional group” was included, due to the presence of marked gender differentiation among occupational groups. On the base of the constructed models, the gender difference in wages was decomposed. Results. The results allowed quantifying the impact of gender on wages, as well as assessing the impact of various factors separately for male and female. It was found a stronger influence of education on the women wages, which indicates, on the one hand, the intellectual advantages of women, and on the other hand, indicates the difficulty of obtaining decent earnings for women with low education. The factor of residence is more affected for men. Decomposition of gender difference in wages allowed us to establish the continued existence of gender inequality in the Russian Federation, ceteris paribus. Conclusion. The study of gender wage differentiation remains an important element in the analysis of both wage differentiation in general and gender disparity. The results of the analysis confirmed the persistence of gender differentiation wages in Russia at present. In the future, it is necessary to expand the analysis of gender differentiation of wages with the following characteristics: additional education, health, marital status, differences in the education of husband and wife, and the presence of preschool children.

Is the age difference between partners related to women's earnings?

BACKGROUND Women earn less than men at most career stages. Explanations for a gender gap in wages include gender differences in the allocation of household and domestic work. At the family level, a ...

From the Ground Up

Self-employment is an important component of many development strategies aiming to enhance earnings and employment among low-income populations. However, women tend to earn less than men through self-employment, calling into question the effectiveness of self-employment as a tool for bolstering women's earnings. In this paper, we identify a novel intervention that boosts women's returns from self-employment and narrows the gender earnings gap in an informal, residential market. We argue that micro-spatial resources offer gender-specific advantages to female business owners. We show how gendered constraints on women's labor market activity intersect with spatial resources to influence their likelihood of running a business and their self-employment earnings. Using data from a Colombian public housing complex, we find that the randomly assigned location of a resident's apartment significantly influences women's business activity, but not men's. Women who run informal, home-based businesses from favorable locations earn more than twice as much as comparable women, narrowing the gender earnings gap by 58.5% and earning an income that lifts them above the poverty line. This study offers a new perspective on how gender and micro-geography intersect to shape self-employment. More broadly, it reveals how an important but often-overlooked factor, micro-spatial variation, influences economic development.

The gender difference in wages and the returns to schooling over the great recession in the U.S.

This paper examines the effects of the Great Recession on the gender difference in hourly wage and the rate of return to schooling in the United States. Using data from American Community Survey 2000–2015, we find that the male-female difference in hourly wage declined during and after the recession. The Great Recession decreased earnings for both men and women, especially for those with more education. We also find there is a significant gender difference in the effects of the Great Recession on the returns to schooling. The Great Recession increased the rate of return to schooling for both men and women, and the female-male difference in the returns to schooling decreased by 0.4 percentage points in the post-recession period. The change of the gender difference in the returns to schooling can be explained by the wage structure change for men and women over the recession.

English skills, labour market status and earnings of Turkish women

In this paper, we investigate the effect of the level of English skills on the labour market outcomes of Turkish women, using data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007. By adopting a bivariate equation framework, we jointly model the effect of English skills on labour market status and, conditional on being a wage earner, on monthly earnings and occupational status. The multinomial equation that explains labour market status allows for a different effect of language knowledge on the probability of being employed, unemployed but actively looking for a job, an unpaid family worker or involved in household tasks. The results indicate that being proficient in English is conditionally associated with a higher probability of being employed as a wage earner and, to a lesser extent, unemployed but looking for a job, whereas it decreases the likelihood of being involved in household tasks. Moreover, there is a significant conditional correlation between having a high level of skills in English and earnings, which is only modestly reduced when job-related variables and (especially) occupation dummies are included as additional controls. Indeed, being proficient in English barely affects occupational status when selection into employment status is controlled for. Therefore, the knowledge of foreign languages (in this case English) seems to stimulate labour market participation and earnings capacity, but does not substantially affect the occupational position of women in the Turkish labour market.

Single Motherhood and the Abolition of Coverture in the United States

Under the common‐law system of coverture in the United States, a married woman relinquished control of property and wages to her husband. Many U.S. states passed acts between 1850 and 1920 that expanded a married woman's right to keep her market earnings and to own separate property. The former were called married women's earnings acts (MWEAs) and the latter married women's property acts (MWPAs). Scholarly interest in the acts’ effects is growing, with researchers examining how the acts affected outcomes such as women's wealth holding and educational attainment. The acts’ impact on women's nonmarital birth decisions remains unexamined, however. We postulate that the acts caused women to anticipate greater benefits from having children within rather than outside of marriage. We thus expect the passage of MWPAs and MWEAs to reduce the likelihood that single women become mothers of young children. We use probit regression to analyze individual data from the U.S. Census for the years 1860 to 1920. We find that the property acts in fact reduced the likelihood that single women have young children. We also find that the “de‐coverture” acts’ effects were stronger for literate women, for U.S.‐born women, in states with higher female labor‐force participation, and in more rural states, consistent with predictions.

Children and Female Employment in Mongolia

Although a large literature has argued that motherhood has a profound and long-lasting negative effect on the employment and earnings of women, there is little evidence focusing on the post-communist region. This paper exploits the latest round of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey to examine the correlation between the presence of small children (aged 0-4) in a family and female employment in Mongolia in 2016. I find that each small child decreases the probability of female labor force participation by 14.7 percentage points relative to women with no small children. These results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias. I examine the availability of childcare and attitudes towards women as potential explanations.

The labor market gender gap in Denmark: Sorting out the past 30 years

We document the declining gap between the average earnings of women and men in Denmark from 1980 to 2010. The decline in the earnings gap is driven by increases in hours worked by women as well as a decline in the gender wage gap. The data show a great deal of segregation across education tracks, occupations, and even workplaces, but this segregation has declined since 1980. These changes in segregation have been accompanied by a reduction in the role of observables in explaining the gender wage gap. The residual gender wage gap has been constant since 1980. The hours gap is not affected by changes in segregation at the occupation and education level: differences in these characteristics for women relative to men do not contribute to the hours gap in 2010 and they did not in 1980. However, a firm-worker fixed effects analysis suggests that 30 percent of the gender hours gap can be explained by the sorting of women into lower-hours workplaces. The hours gap is driven by mothers, the group for whom differences in employer, occupation, education, and experience also imply large differences in wages. The combined effect of hours and wages is a more than 20 percent gender earnings gap among well-attached (halftime-plus) workers between 25 and 60 years old, 10 percent of which cannot be explained by differences in hours, or in the readily observable characteristics of these workers.

Gender effects in the credence goods market: An experimental study

In this paper, we offer further explanation for differences in earnings across genders. We investigate difference in preferences in payment systems for credence goods. We find that women were no less likely to select variable rate payment schemes as compensation for providing credence goods than men. However, overall earnings remained higher for men than for women. Disaggregating behavior by type of payment and gender reveals that women who chose fee-for-service provided significantly fewer units of services paid for than men who chose fee-for-service. This difference accounts for the lower overall earnings for women in our experiments.

The daughter‐in‐law questions remittances: changes in the gender of remittances among Indian migrants to Australia

AbstractIn this article, I present a cross‐generational analysis of the gendered meanings and politics surrounding monetary remittances. Indian female migrants to Australia, who contribute significantly to household incomes, have recently started to question the sources and directions of remittances. This happens when the woman's earnings are sent, without consultation, to the husband's parents for luxuries, while the family in Australia is struggling. Women in paid work also want to send their earnings to their own parents, particularly if there is financial need. Remittances have become a testing ground for the traditional belief that the husband and his family own the money in the patrilineal marital household. It is possible to interpret male control of remittances without consultation as a form of financial abuse of the wife in the sending household. The article draws on two qualitative studies on five decades of Indian migration to Australia covering 203 people from 112 families.

ANALISIS DAMPAK KARAKTERISTIK DEMOGRAFI PADA PEROLEHAN PENDAPATAN PEKERJA PEREMPUAN SEKTOR INFORMAL DI KOTA PALEMBANG

This study aims to explain the impact of demographic characteristics on the income earning of informal sector workers in Palembang City. The method used mixed methode, which is a combination of quantitative and qualitative. Data collection by observation, interview and documentation. Data obtained from the informant selected by purposive sampling. Collected quantitative data were analyzed using the SPSS Program through the analysis of frequency decryption and crosstabs, while the qualitative analysis used the steps of reduction, display, and conclution. The validity of data uses degree of credibility with techniques of persistence enhancement, extension of observation, triangulation, and member checking. The results showed that demographic characteristics such as; age, status, education, skills and occupation have an impact on the earnings of informal sector women's incomes whereas training has no impact on the earnings of informal sector workers

Nice jobs for the girls? [engineering industry recruitment

The article examines some of the data from the UK gender pay gap survey showing that one of the UK's biggest and most important industries (engineering) is not really employing that many women (who are half the population) and it pays those women it does employ less than men are paid in that same profession. In April 2018, UK employers with more than 250 staff were required by government to publish data on their gender pay gap. A gender pay gap doesn't imply a man and woman doing the same job but having unequal pay, which is against the law. Instead, firms have to calculate the mean or median difference between men's and women's earnings throughout their organisation.

The Role of Socio-Economic Factors in Earning of Women in Education Sector District Peshawar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa)

This paper overviews socio-economic factors as determinants of working women earnings in education department of district Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For this purpose, a primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire from 126 working females in September, 2017. Multinomial logistic regression technique has been used for the estimation of results. The main findings of the study are that education, experience, family income, and locality of job area showed positive relationship with working women earnings. However, marital status remained insignificant. Based on the findings of this study the researchers recommended that females are significantly contributing in family expenditures. Therefore, government should invest more in female’s education and prioritize it.

Experimental Evidence on the Long-Term Effects of a Youth Training Program

Identifying the right human capital investments for disadvantaged youths is a key policy concern worldwide, yet almost no rigorous evidence on the long-run effects of these investments exists outside the United States. The authors present a large-scale randomized controlled trial of a youth training program, estimating effects six years after random assignment from a representative sample of more than 3,200 youths. The intervention is prototypical of training programs worldwide and is implemented at scale in the Dominican Republic. Empirical findings indicate, on the one hand, significant effects on formal employment, particularly for men, and on earnings for both men and women in Santo Domingo. On the other hand, no significant effects on overall average employment are evident.

Dynamics of the formal and informal labour in Brazil: occupational and earnings mobility

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss recent dynamics of the Brazilian labour market, by analysing occupational mobility patterns, specially the transitions between formal and informal labour, and verify the earnings mobility resulting from these transitions, separately by gender.Design/methodology/approachThe changes in the mobility patterns are analysed by performing an estimation of the transition probabilities between different occupational status between 2002 and 2012, using a multinomial logit model and the microdata from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME). The earnings mobility is analysed by using quantile regressions.FindingsThe results indicate a high degree of mobility from unemployment to formal employment in the period but suggest the persistence of mobility patterns. Women are better off in the period, but only among individuals with better attributes. The earnings mobility results, for women and men, suggest an increase in valuation of the formal labour relatively to informality (informal salaried employment and self-employment), especially at the bottom of the earnings distribution.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a better understanding of recent changes in occupational mobility patterns between formal and informal labour and the earnings mobility underlying these patterns, accounting for the differences along the earnings distribution and gender issues. That is, it allows identify which groups of workers benefited more from the formalisation process to infer about trends in formal–informal dynamics over the period and discuss the challenges in conducting policies to promote inclusive and quality employment.

Compulsory Schooling and Early Labor Market Outcomes in a Middle-Income Country

The 1997 reform in Turkey which extended compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years provides an opportunity to estimate the returns to schooling in a middle-income country. The availability of a rich set of early labor market variables also provides an opportunity to assess mechanisms through which returns to schooling occur. I find quite small effects of compulsory schooling on earnings of men but large positive effects on earnings of women who work, without raising their overall low rate of labor force participation. In terms of mechanisms, I find that women who worked moved into higher skill and formal sector jobs, which involved more complicated tasks on average.

Coase Lecture – The Glass Ceiling

Despite decades of progress, women remain underrepresented in the upper part of the earnings distribution. We review the recent research trying to explain this phenomenon. After briefly revisiting gender differences in education, we turn our attention to a body of work that has argued that gender differences in psychological attributes are holding back women's earnings. We then review another active area of research focused on the challenges that women may face when trying to juggle competing demands on their time in the workplace and the home, particularly when the home includes children. We discuss recent work documenting women's greater demand for flexibility in the workplace, as well as work measuring the labour market penalties associated with such demand for flexibility, particularly in the higher paying occupations in the economy. We highlight possible countervailing forces (both at work and at home) that may explain why these work–family considerations may remain highly relevant to today's glass ceiling despite reduced time spent in non‐market work and a trend towards a more equal division of non‐market work between men and women. Finally, we discuss the role that public policy and human resource practices may play in adding more cracks to the glass ceiling.