| By: |
Vincenzo Scoppa;
Manuela Stranges (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: |
We investigate the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes at
individual level analyzing how cultural values from the home country affect
the decision to work of immigrants in Italy, using the National Survey of
Households with Immigrants. Following the “epidemiological approach”, we
relate the probability of being employed in Italy for immigrant women with the
female labor force participation (LFP) in their country of origin, taken as a
proxy of cultural heritage and gender role model. Controlling for a number of
individual and household characteristics, we show that participation in the
labor market is affected both by the culture of females’ and by their
husband’s origin countries. We also show that the relationship between own
decisions in the host country and home country LFP cannot be attributed to
human capital quality or discrimination and it turns out to be stronger for
immigrants that maintained more intense ties with their origin countries.
Finally, we investigate to what extent cultural influence is driven by
religious beliefs: we find that religion is a key determinant of differences
in female labor decisions, but, besides religion, other cultural values exert
additional influence.. |
| Keywords: |
Culture, Immigration, Labor Force Participation, Epidemiological Approach, Gender, Italy |
| JEL: |
Z10 Z13 J10 J15 J16 J20 |
| Date: |
2014–10 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:201413&r=cul |