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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Marcella Alsan |
| Abstract: | Recent policy debates on closing the education gender gap in developing countries have focused on cash transfers, but standard models of intrahousehold allocation imply that reducing the opportunity cost of girls' schooling might also be effective. I test this prediction using quasi-experimental variation from a national vaccination campaign targeting under-five children in Turkey. I find gains in health and human capital among age-eligible children of both sexes. However, educational spillover effects accrue exclusively to their adolescent, ineligible sisters. These spillover effects are increasing if the mother works outside the home and in the number of young children in the household, and are absent if an elder sister is present. My results suggest reducing morbidity among preschool children may have the added benefit of improving educational outcomes for their adolescent sisters in the developing world |
| JEL: | I25 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23702&r=dem |
| By: | Kugler, Adriana D. |
| Abstract: | Recent work suggests that women are more responsive to negative feedback than men in certain environments. We examine whether negative feedback in the form of relatively low grades in major-related classes explains gender differences in the majors undergraduates choose. We use unique administrative data from a large private university on the East Coast from 2009-2016 to test whether women are more sensitive to grades than men, and whether the gender composition of major-related classes affects major changes. We also control for other factors that may affect a student's major including: high school student performance, gender of faculty, and economic returns of majors. Finally, we examine how students' decisions are affected by external cues that signal STEM fields as masculine. The results show that high school academic preparation, faculty gender composition, and major returns have little effect on major switching behaviors, and that women and men are equally likely to change their major in response to poor grades in major-related courses. Moreover, women in male-dominated majors do not exhibit different patterns of switching behaviors relative to their male colleagues. Women are, however, more likely to switch out of male-dominated STEM majors in response to poor performance compared to men. Therefore, we find that it takes multiple signals of lack of fit into a major (low grades, gender composition of class, and external stereotyping signals) to impel female students to switch majors. |
| Keywords: | Education Gender Gap; Major Choice; STEM fields |
| JEL: | I23 I24 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12229&r=dem |
| By: | Daniel Aaronson; Rajeev Dehejia; Andrew Jordan; Cristian Pop-Eleches; Cyrus Samii; Karl Schulze |
| Abstract: | This paper documents the evolving impact of childbearing on the work activity of mothers. Based on a compiled dataset of 441 censuses and surveys between 1787 and 2015, representing 103 countries and 48.4 million mothers, we document three main findings: (1) the effect of fertility on labor supply is small and typically indistinguishable from zero at low levels of development and economically large and negative at higher levels of development; (2) this negative gradient is remarkably consistent across histories of currently developed countries and contemporary cross-sections of countries; and (3) the results are strikingly robust to identification strategies, model specification, data construction, and rescaling. We explain our results within a standard labor-leisure model and attribute the negative labor supply gradient to changes in the sectoral and occupational structure of female jobs as countries develop. |
| JEL: | J13 J22 N30 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23717&r=dem |
| By: | Daniela Piazzalunga |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the gender wage gap among recently graduated people, controlling for job and academic variables and for the field of study, as women lag in highly remunerative majors. The raw gender gap in hourly wages is 5.6%. Although including academic variables and the field of study, on top of job-related variables, slightly reduces the unexplained gap, the latter still accounts for most of the total difference. Using quantile decomposition, the paper shows that the unexplained gap increases along the wage distribution, indicating a glass ceiling effect. Heterogeneities arise across fields of study: the largest total gap emerges in Law, Political-Social sciences, and Economics-Statistics. In most disciplines, there is a significant unexplained gap – from 3.3% (Medicine), to 8.7% (Law), up to 9.6% (Agriculture) – which constitutes the largest share of the difference, confirming that most of the wage gap remains unexplained also by major. Finally, I use geographical differences to explore the influence of institutional and macro-economic variables, as well as of attitudes towards gender norms. Results indicate that childcare and part-time availability are correlated with lower gender wage gaps, while traditional gender norms are associated with higher gaps. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, College graduates, Quantile decomposition, Field of study, Regional differences |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2017-03&r=dem |
| By: | Richard Akresh; Sonia Bhalotra; Marinella Leone; Una O. Osili |
| Abstract: | We analyze long-term impacts of the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War, providing the first evidence of intergenerational impacts. Women exposed to the war in their growing years exhibit reduced adult stature, increased likelihood of being overweight, earlier age at first birth, and lower educational attainment. Exposure to a primary education program mitigates impacts of war exposure on education. War exposed men marry later and have fewer children. War exposure of mothers (but not fathers) has adverse impacts on child growth, survival, and education. Impacts vary with age of exposure. For mother and child health, the largest impacts stem from adolescent exposure. |
| JEL: | I12 I25 J13 O12 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23721&r=dem |
| By: | Bagir, Yusuf |
| Abstract: | Turkey received about 2.7 million refugees between 2011 and 2015. This paper examines the causal relationship between the Syrian refugee induced increase in labor supply and natives’ labor market outcomes in Turkey using the micro level Household Labor Force Surveys. The migration impact is analyzed in two distinct categories considering the motives behind the migration decision. The initial migration to the border regions is assumed to be completely exogenous and defined as the primary migration. Hence, a standard difference in differences strategy is employed to estimate the labor market impacts in those regions. On the other hand, migration from the primary regions towards the inner regions in Turkey (secondary migration) has suffered from the endogenous selection issues. To handle these concerns, I developed an instrumental variables estimation method following David Card (2009)’s ethnic enclave approach. I found statistically significant negative employment and wage effects on the low-skilled and less-experienced individuals in the primary migration analysis. The decline in the wages of informal workers is the main contributor of the negative wage effects. Secondary migration has no impact on the employment at all but there are statistically significant negative wage effects on the low-skilled and less-experienced workers. |
| Keywords: | Syrian Refugees, Turkey, Labor Economics, İnternational Economics, Migration Economics |
| JEL: | J1 J10 J2 J3 J6 J61 |
| Date: | 2017–08–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80803&r=dem |
| By: | Raymond B. Frempong; David Stadelmann |
| Abstract: | Female education and its potential to empower women in the development process have engaged the interest of policy makers and academics over the years. By employing individual level data from Ghana and Uganda, we analyze whether female education has a direct bargaining effect on six household welfare indicators: child labor and school enrollment; food expenditure and nutrition intake; female labor force participation and fertility rates. The empirical results indicate that both, the level of the wife and her husband's education, are significant determinants of household welfare. However, the wife’s education has no larger effect than that of her husband's, and the relative bargaining position of the wife, at most, has negligible effects on the welfare indicators studied. Further robustness analysis largely confirms our findings. We conclude that, whilst female education has the potential to enhance household welfare, the effect does not necessarily work though enhanced bargaining power. |
| Keywords: | Women Empowerment; Intra-household Bargaining; Household Welfare; Ghana; Uganda |
| JEL: | I2 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2017-08&r=dem |
| By: | Daniel S. Hamermesh; Katie R. Genadek; Michael C. Burda; |
| Abstract: | See content. |
| Keywords: | time use, work effort, racial differences, discrimination |
| JEL: | J15 J22 J31 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2017-019&r=dem |