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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Blau, Francine D. (Cornell University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women's behavior in the United States – looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply but, for the second generation, also examines fertility and education. We find considerable evidence that immigrant source country gender roles influence immigrant and second generation women's behavior in the United States. This conclusion is robust to various efforts to rule out the effect of other unobservables and to distinguish the effect of culture from that of social capital. These results support a growing literature that suggests that culture matters for economic behavior. At the same time, the results suggest considerable evidence of assimilation of immigrants. Immigrant women narrow the labor supply gap with native‐born women with time in the United States, and, while our results suggest an important role for intergenerational transmission, they also indicate considerable convergence of immigrants to native levels of schooling, fertility, and labor supply across generations. |
| Keywords: | gender, immigration, labor supply, wages, social capital, culture, human capital |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9534&r=dem |
| By: | Panos Mavrokonstantis |
| Abstract: | In this paper I investigate the intergenerational transmission of gender norms. The norm I focus on is the traditional view that it is the role of the mother to look after young children and the role of the father to be the breadwinner. I develop a model of identity formation where a child's gender norm is endogenous to two main sources of socialisation: her family on the one hand, and society at large on the other. Using data from the Next Steps survey and the International Social Survey Programme, I examine the intergenerational transmission of gender norms in England when the norms of the family, and the society it is embedded in, are oppositional. My findings indicate between-sex heterogeneity in the transmission of gender norms from parents to children. Boys raised in modern families (i.e. where the mother is the breadwinner) are less likely to develop traditional norms. However, compared to those in traditional families, girls raised in modern families are actually more likely to be traditional; in opposition to their family's but in line with society's norm. Examining further outcomes associated with gender norms, I find that girls raised in modern families are also less likely to state that being able to earn high wages is important for them, and are less likely to pursue a science degree at university level. I use my identity formation model to argue that these results can be explained by heterogeneity in preferences for conformity to the family, and present empirical evidence that indeed, girls in modern families are less conformist than those in traditional families. Using a regression discontinuity design, I further show that this weaker preference for conformity is in fact a result of the treatment of living in a modern family. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational transmission, gender norms, gender inequality |
| JEL: | D10 J16 Z13 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:stippp:27&r=dem |
| By: | Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. (University of Melbourne); Moschion, Julie (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the source of the gender gap in third grade numeracy and reading. We adopt an Oaxaca-Blinder approach and decompose the gender gap in educational achievement into endowment and response components. Our estimation relies on unusually rich panel data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children in which information on child development reported by parents and teachers is linked to each child's results on a national, standardized achievement test. We find that girls in low- and middle-SES families have an advantage in reading, while boys in high-SES families have an advantage in numeracy. Girls score higher on their third grade reading tests in large part because they were more ready for school at age four and had better teacher-assessed literacy skills in kindergarten. Boys' advantage in numeracy occurs because they achieve higher numeracy test scores than girls with the same education-related characteristics. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps, educational achievement, education, Australia |
| JEL: | J13 I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9535&r=dem |
| By: | Bartel, Ann P. (Columbia University); Rossin-Slater, Maya (University of California, Santa Barbara); Ruhm, Christopher J. (University of Virginia); Stearns, Jenna (University of California, Santa Barbara); Waldfogel, Jane (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of paid leave legislation on fathers' leave-taking, as well as on the division of leave between mothers and fathers in dual-earner households. Using difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference designs, we study California's Paid Family Leave (CA-PFL) program, which is the first source of government-provided paid parental leave available to fathers in the United States. Our results show that fathers in California are 0.9 percentage points – or 46 percent relative to the pre-treatment mean – more likely to take leave in the first year of their children's lives when CA-PFL is available. We also examine how parents allocate leave in households where both parents work. We find that CA-PFL increases father-only leave-taking (i.e., father on leave while mother is at work) by 50 percent and joint leave-taking (i.e., both parents on leave at the same time) by 28 percent. These effects are much larger for fathers of sons than for fathers of daughters, and almost entirely driven by fathers of first-born children and fathers in occupations with a high share of female workers. |
| Keywords: | parental leave, father's leave-taking, leave-sharing |
| JEL: | J2 J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9530&r=dem |
| By: | Ralitza Dimova (Institute of Development Policy & Management, University of Manchester, United Kingdom IZA – Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany); Ira N. Gang (Department of Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA IZA – Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany CReAM, Department of Economics, University College London, London, United Kingdom Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | The poverty and extreme poverty alleviating potential of female empowerment through agricultural commercialisation has been an increasing focus of much of the recent development literature and policy discourse. Using representative data from Malawi, this chapter looks at the role of key policy interventions on the probability for women to enter the commercial agricultural sector and the impact of agricultural commercialisation on poverty and extreme poverty. We find that (i) Most interventions had positive impact on female food commercialisation, but either did not affect or affected negatively female entry into high value agriculture, (ii) Female empowerment through high value agriculture benefitted the poor and extreme poor. We conclude that gender norms in food commercialisation and high value agriculture should be understood for female empowerment interventions of the type implemented in Malawi to have the desired effect. |
| Keywords: | Female empowerment, commercial agriculture, policy interventions, Malawi |
| JEL: | Q12 O2 O13 |
| Date: | 2015–11–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rut:rutres:201522&r=dem |
| By: | Azam, Mehtabul (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | We examine educational transmission between fathers (mothers) and daughters in India for daughters born during 1962-1991. We find that educational persistence, as measured by the regression coefficient of father's (mother's) education as a predictor of daughter's education, has declined over time. However, the correlation between educational attainment of daughters and fathers (mothers), another commonly used measure of persistence, suggests only a marginal decline. Further decomposing the intergenerational correlation, we find that although persistence has declined at the lower end of the fathers' (mothers') educational distribution, it has been compensated by an increase in persistence at other parts of fathers' (mothers') educational distribution. We also find that "Equality of Opportunity" remains an elusive goal for India. Not only the probability of a daughter attaining senior secondary or above education (top end of educational distribution) is positively associated with father's (mother's) education levels, the gaps in those probabilities do not show any sign of convergence. Similarly, there is no sign of any convergence in the probability of a daughter attaining senior secondary or above education even with the same level of father's (mother's) education between Higher Hindu Castes' daughters and daughters belonging to disadvantaged groups such as Other Backward Castes or Scheduled Castes/Tribes. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational educational persistence, daughters, women, India |
| JEL: | J6 I28 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9518&r=dem |
| By: | Daniela Piazzalunga (University of Turin, Italy); Maria Laura Di Tommaso (University of Turin, Italy) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the gender wage gap in Italy during the 2008-2012 economic crisis, using cross-sectional EU-SILC data. The gender wage gap increased from 4\% in 2008 to 8\% in 2012, while for most European countries the gap decreased over the same period. After 2010 the growth of the Italian gender wage gap (and its unexplained component) was particularly high in the upper part of the wage distribution. In 2010-2011 a wage freeze in the public sector was introduced as an austerity measure, and the average public sector premium dropped from 15\% to 11\%. Using counterfactual analyses, we show that the wage freeze has been one of the major causes of the growth of the gender wage gap, disproportionately affecting women, who are more likely to be employed in the public sector. This `policy effect' accounts for more than 100\% of the increase between 2009 and 2011, while other changes, if anything, would have reduced the gender gap. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, Great Recession, public sector premium, decomposition, counterfactual analysis. |
| JEL: | J31 J71 J16 J45 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2015-381&r=dem |
| By: | Ralitza Dimova (Institute of Development Policy AND Management, University of Manchester and IZA, Bonn.); Gil S. Epstein (Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan and IZA, Bonn and CReAM, London.); Ira N. Gang (Rutgers University and IZA, Bonn, CReAM, London and IOS, Regensburg.) |
| Abstract: | We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999, 2000) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children’s working hours. Analysis using Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data on the Kagera region in Tanzania lend support to the hypothesis that both emigration and remittances reduce child labor. |
| Keywords: | child labor, remittances, emigration, migration |
| JEL: | D62 F22 I30 |
| Date: | 2015–11–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rut:rutres:201523&r=dem |
| By: | Gobillon, Laurent (Paris School of Economics); Solignac, Matthieu (University of Pennsylvania) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the difference in homeownership rates between natives and first-generation immigrants in France, and how this difference evolves over the 1975-1999 period, by using a large longitudinal dataset. We find that the homeownership gap is large and has increased. Entries into the territory have a large negative effect on the evolution of homeownership rates for immigrants. Although entrants have on average better education than people staying in the territory for the entire period (i.e. stayers), they are younger and thus at an earlier stage in the wealth accumulation process. They are also located in large cities, where the homeownership rate is lower, and the returns to their characteristics are lower than those for stayers. Leavers have a positive effect on the evolution of homeownership rates for immigrants because they have a low access to homeownership and they exit the country. But this effect is only one-third that of entrants. For stayers, we show that returns to characteristics change in favor of immigrants, which is consistent with assimilation theories. However, among stayers who access homeownership, immigrants end up in owned dwellings that are of lesser quality than natives. |
| Keywords: | homeownership, immigrants, longitudinal data |
| JEL: | J15 R21 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9517&r=dem |