| By: |
Torosyan, Karine (ISET, Tbilisi State University);
Pignatti, Norberto (ISET, Tbilisi State University) |
| Abstract: |
Modern women often face an uneasy choice: dedicating their time to
reproductive household work, or joining the workforce and spending time away
from home and household duties. Both choices are associated with benefits, as
well as non-trivial costs, and necessarily involve some trade-offs,
influencing the general feeling of happiness women experience given their
decision. The trade-offs are especially pronounced in traditional developing
countries, where both the pressure for women to stay at home and the need to
earn additional income are strong, making the choice even more controversial.
To understand the implications of this choice on the happiness of women in
these types of countries we compare housewives and working women of the South
Caucasus region. The rich data collected annually by the Caucasus Research
Resource Center allows us to match working women with their housewife
counterparts and to compare the level of happiness across the two groups –
separately for each country as well as for Armenian and Azerbaijani minorities
residing in Georgia. We find a significant negative happiness gap for working
women in Armenia and in Azerbaijan, but not in Georgia. The absence of such a
gap among the Armenian and Azerbaijani minorities of Georgia indicates that
the gap is mostly a country- rather than an ethnicity-specific effect. |
| Keywords: |
female employment, reproductive housework, life satisfaction and happiness, propensity score matching |
| JEL: |
I31 J16 J21 J24 |
| Date: |
2020–01 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12888&r=all |