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on Gender |
| By: | Adela Luque; Maggie R. Jones |
| Abstract: | A strand of the self-employment literature suggests that those “pushed” into self-employment out of necessity may perform differently from those “pulled” into self-employment to pursue a business opportunity. While findings on self-employment outcomes by self-employed type are not unanimous, there is mounting evidence that performance outcomes differ between these two self-employed types. Another strand of the literature has found important gender differences in self-employment entry rates, motivations for entry, and outcomes. Using a unique set of data that links the American Community Survey to administrative data from Form 1040 and W-2 records, we bring together these two strands of the literature. We explore whether there are gender differences in self-employment duration of self-employed types. In particular, we examine the likelihood of self-employment exit towards unemployment versus the wage sector for five consecutive entry cohorts, including two cohorts who entered self-employment during the Great Recession. Severely limited labor-market opportunities may have driven many in the recession cohorts to enter self-employment, while those entering self-employment during the boom may have been pursuing opportunities under favorable market conditions. To more explicitly test the concept of “necessity” versus “opportunity” self-employment, we also examine the wage labor attachment (or weeks worked in the wage sector) in the year prior to becoming self-employed. We find that, within the cohorts we examine, there are gender differences in the rate at which men and women depart self-employment for either wage work or non-participation, but that the patterns are dependent on pre self-employment wage-sector attachment and cohort effects. |
| Keywords: | Self-employment, gender differences, gender, entrepreneurship, necessity entrepreneur, opportunity entrepreneur, self-employment duration, Great Recession. |
| JEL: | J15 J20 J24 L26 M13 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:19-24&r=all |
| By: | Kaiser, Tim; Oberrauch, Luis; Seeber, Günther |
| Abstract: | We introduce a test of economic competence for German-speaking secondary school students and provide evidence from a large-scale assessment with 6,230 students from grades seven to ten. The article presents the development and psychometric properties of the scale, as well as an investigation of predictors of economic competence. We find evidence of a gender gap favoring male students, lower scores for students with a migration background, and parents’ socioeconomic background being a predictor of test performance. Additionally, we document sizeable differences between tracks, as well as gains in economic competence across grades in the order of magnitude of 0.06 to 0.2 standard deviations per year. The article concludes with perspectives on an impact evaluation of a curriculum reform introducing mandatory economic education in secondary school. |
| Keywords: | economic competence,economic literacy,item response theory,school economics |
| JEL: | A21 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:202639&r=all |
| By: | Alfano, Vincenzo; Cicatiello, Lorenzo; Gaeta, Giuseppe Lucio; Pinto, Mauro |
| Abstract: | A growing number of academic studies are devoting their attention to the study of the gender wage gap. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the existence of this gap specifically among those who hold the highest possible educational qualification, i.e. a PhD. The analysis relies on Italian crosssectional data collected through a highly representative survey of the employment conditions of PhD holders. The econometric analysis is carried out by means of OLS regression, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis and quantile decomposition. Findings suggest that a gender gap in hourly wages exists among PhD holders, that it lies approximately between 5% and 8%, with sizeable differences by sector of employment and field of specialization, and that such a gap is largely unexplained. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap,return on education,Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition,quantile decomposition |
| JEL: | J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:393&r=all |
| By: | Fernandes, Ana (University of Applied Sciences); Huber, Martin; Plaza, Camila (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | The apprenticeship market is the earliest possible entry into the workforce in developed economies. Since early labor market shocks are likely magnified throughout professional life, avoiding mismatches between talent and occupations e.g. due to gender- or status-based discrimination appears crucial. This experimental study investigates the effects of applicant gender and its interaction with parental occupation on callback rates in the Swiss apprenticeship market, i.e. invitations to an interview, assessment center, or trial apprenticeship. Our correspondence test consists of sending out fictitious job applications with randomized gender and parental occupation to apprenticeship vacancies in four Swiss regions. We by and large find no robust evidence of differential treatment by employers, as gender and parental occupation do not affect callback rates in a statistically significant way in most cases. |
| Keywords: | Field Experiment; Correspondence Test; Discrimination; Gender; Parental Occupation |
| JEL: | C93 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2019–09–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fri:fribow:fribow00506&r=all |
| By: | Zurab Abramishvili; William Appleman; Sergii Maksymovych |
| Abstract: | There is much research indicating the presence of a parental preference for a particular gender of children. The main objective of this paper is to test between the two main explanations for the existence of such preference, namely differences in the costs of raising sons and daughters versus the gender bias (corresponding to parental utility derived from a child’s gender or from characteristics exclusive to that gender). First, we use recent EU-SILC data from several Balkan and Scandinavian countries to confirm that the gender of the firstborn predicts the likelihood of a given family having three children or more — a common measure of parental gender preference. We confirm son preference in certain Balkan countries and daughter preference in Scandinavian countries. Both having a first child of the preferred gender and of the more costly gender can decrease the probability of having three or more children because parents may already be content or may lack sufficient resources, respectively. Next, we use information on household consumption to differentiate the two explanations. We argue that under the differential cost hypothesis, parents of children of the more costly gender should spend more on goods for children and less on household public goods as well as on parental personal consumption. In contrast, having children of the preferred gender should increase spending on household public goods since such families have higher marriage surplus and are more stable. Our evidence corroborates the cost difference explanation in countries exhibiting daughter preference. |
| Keywords: | gender preference; gender differences; parental influence; household expenditure; |
| JEL: | J13 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2019–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp643&r=all |
| By: | Danijela Vuletiæ Èugalj |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first evidence of the existence of gender-based favoritism in life saving decisions to donate blood. We conduct a field experiment among blood donors from Bosnia and Herzegovina where we exogenously manipulate the signal of a blood recipient’s gender by adding his/her name, and photograph, to a letter soliciting blood donation. Motivated by the literature on identity, we test the influence on donation behavior of two dimensions of shared identity between donor and recipient – gender and age. 74% more blood donors donate if the potential blood recipient is of the same gender. This result is mostly driven by male donors donating to a male recipient. In contrast to gender identity being an important determinant in fostering donors’ participation rates, being of similar age to the blood recipient has relatively little effect. By identifying an important factor that influences willingness to give blood, our results have implications for better targeting of campaigns to increase blood donations. |
| Keywords: | field experiment; blood donation; identity theory; |
| JEL: | A13 C93 D91 I12 I18 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp639&r=all |
| By: | Klein, Matthew J. (U of Wisconsin-Madison); Barham, Bradford L. (U of Wisconsin-Madison); Wu, Yuexuan (U of California, Davis) |
| Abstract: | We provide the first empirical evidence that increasing equality between decision makers in a family reduces malaria transmission in Malawi. International organizations and the Malawi government have invested more than one hundred million dollars to reduce the disease burden in the past decade, successfully reducing malaria prevalence by innovating, and scaling up impactful interventions. Additional progress is possible: we show that integrating women’s empowerment programs into malaria control efforts would reduce the disease burden further. We measure power in three different ways: we estimate two separate collective models of the family, one with outside options and one without, and we construct a reduced form index as a proxy. We find that women have less power than men across all three measurement methods. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that a one standard deviation increase in women’s bargaining power decreases the likelihood that a family member contracts malaria by between 45% and 48%, depending on which measurement we use. We suggest that NGO and government programs addressing malaria incorporate a female empowerment component, like a gendered cash transfer, to better combat this deadly disease. |
| JEL: | D1 I14 I15 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:wisagr:594&r=all |