No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / James F. Ragan Jr / This report reviews the effects of fertility on female labor supply, primarily female labor force participation and work hours. Although estimates of the causal relationship between fertility and female labor supply are mixed, this report tries to review why and by how much an additional child in a family affects work decisions and work hours of mothers on average. Statistical analysis shows a decreasing trend in fertility and an increasing trend in female labor force participation throughout the world over the last four decades. Using different specifications and estimation techniques, empirical studies suggest that fertility has negative effects on maternal labor supply because childbearing falls on women and women have lower wage rates than men on average. The negative relationship between fertility and female labor supply is explained by social, economic, and technical forces that affect fertility and female labor supply, including an increase in the value of women’s time due to an increase in education levels of women, expensive childcare, and substitutes for children; emphasis on quality instead of quantity of children; an increase in employment opportunities for women; changes in social norms towards supporting women working outside their home; and technical progress in birth control.

149 f. / Submitted by Ana Valéria de Jesus Moura (anavaleria_131@hotmail.com) on 2013-05-24T15:07:12Z No. of bitstreams: 2 TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 833859 bytes, checksum: d424b31158a460f6cd324bbb07ce259e (MD5) PRÉ-TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 110575 bytes, checksum: 311874d87736395abab8d767db26ba23 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Valéria de Jesus Moura(anavaleria_131@hotmail.com) on 2013-05-24T15:09:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 833859 bytes, checksum: d424b31158a460f6cd324bbb07ce259e (MD5) PRÉ-TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 110575 bytes, checksum: 311874d87736395abab8d767db26ba23 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-24T15:09:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 833859 bytes, checksum: d424b31158a460f6cd324bbb07ce259e (MD5) PRÉ-TEXTO FINAL PARA IMPRESSÃO E DEPÓSITO.pdf: 110575 bytes, checksum: 311874d87736395abab8d767db26ba23 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal a análise das desigualdades que afetam os direitos da mulher, influenciadas, em sua gênese, principalmente pela desigual distribuição sexual dos encargos familiares. O vetor do estudo é o da perspectiva dos direitos de conciliação entre trabalho e família e a efetividade de tais direitos. O estudo dos direitos de conciliação tem o seu fundamento principal no princípio da igualdade impondo a não discriminação fundada na perspectiva do gênero. Desta forma, assegurar medidas de conciliação entre a vida laboral e familiar significa fomentar a igualdade entre os sexos, possibilitando novos rearranjos familiares que favoreçam o compartilhamento das responsabilidades familiares e domésticas entre homens e mulheres. As discriminações relacionadas às responsabilidades familiares precisam ser combatidas para permitir o alcance da igualdade entre os gêneros, a partir de uma mudança nos papeis atribuídos tradicionalmente a homens e mulheres na família. / Salvador

In tandem with the economic development in Taiwan, female participation in the labor market has been growing. In 1980, female labor force participation rate in Taiwan was only 39.25% but it increased about 10 percentage points in the following 27 years, rising to 49.44% in 2007. Compared with advanced countries in the OECD, female labor force participation in Taiwan still has a long way to go. This research draws on past patterns in Taiwan and OECD member countries to understand the development of international female labor force participation. The purposes of this study are to understand the trend of female labor force participation in OECD countries and in Taiwan, and to know the impact of the new economy and atypical work on female labor force participation. From this study, it is obvious that internationally female labor force participation has grown from 1980 to 2006. By age groups, it indicates that the highest female labor force participation rate in OECD countries was in the age group of 40-44 while in Taiwan it was in the age group of 25-29. By the level of educational attainment, it brings out that education has improved female labor force participation since the highest female labor force participation rates were in the group of tertiary education in OECD countries, as well as in Taiwan. By sector and occupation, the statistics show that more and more females are employed in the service sector, working as service workers and sales workers. Moreover, the knowledge-based economy and the atypical jobs have lowered the entry barriers of labor market for females and have improved female labor force participation.

Over the past 50 years, women have become important participants in the labor market. With the increase in the number of middle-aged women going through the menopause transition, the question arises as to the effect of this transition on the labor market. Previous studies have shown that reproductive cycles have a non-trivial negative effect on women’s labor market outcomes. Thus, the cessation of these reproductive cycles (menopause) should bring relief for these women. However, another body of literature asserts that the menopause transition itself has a negative effect on women’s mental and physical health and so may have a negative effect on labor market outcomes. This study seeks to explore the effect of the menopause transition on labor market outcomes. The empirical analyses are done using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, with the key explanatory variables being the menopause transition stages: premenopause, perimenopause, surgical menopause and natural postmenopause. The regressions include a control for whether the woman experienced early menopause and whether she had a hysterectomy. The first part of the study examines the impact of the menopause transition on health using depression and the scores on the activities of daily living as the measures of health status. These analyses use cross sectional data drawn from the 1995 wave of the survey for activity limitations and the 2003 wave for the depression measure. The findings of these analyses indicate that the menopause transition increases the likelihood of depression and functional limitations. The main part of the study explores the effect of the menopause transition on the following labor market outcomes: labor force participation, hours worked, full time employment, wages, and self-employment. Ordinary Least Squares, the fixed effects model, the random effects model, and the family fixed effects (siblings) model are used to examine these questions. The analysis also uses 2SLS to correct for endogeneity of the menopause variables and the Heckman two-step procedure to correct for sample selection bias. The findings show that women in premenopause are less likely to be in the labor force than women in natural postmenopause, even after controlling for life-cycle variables. The results also indicate that there are certain benefits from using hormone replacement therapy (HRT), as women who had surgical menopause and are using hormones are more likely to be in the labor force than women with surgical menopause who are not using HRT. Women in premenopause and women in perimenopause are less likely to work full-time compared to women who experienced natural postmenopause. The findings also show that there are no significant differences in hours worked by women in the different menopause stages. Women in premenopause typically earn more than women in natural postmenopause. Furthermore, women in perimenopause and women with surgical menopause are more likely to be self employed. The findings indicate that, among a generally healthy population, the menopause transition results in an increase in labor supply. However, a wage penalty is observed among women in postmenopause, when compared to women who are premenopause. The implications of the findings are that menopause should not be medicalized but should be viewed in a social and cultural context as the changes that occur during the transition may open up possibilities for positive individual development. Thus the cessation of menstrual cycles brings relief for women and results in an increase in labor supply, albeit one associated with a wage penalty.

How do the experiences of women in the labor market differ from the experiences of men? Do economic crises affect their labor market decisions differently? Economists have investigated the responses of women to specific moments of crisis in Argentina – the country lends itself well to this analysis, as the last three decades of its history have seen both economic growth and financial collapse. With the crisis literature in mind, I investigate trends in female labor force participation rates in Argentina between 1980-2003, finding that while some evidence supports the “added worker effect” hypothesis, more research must be done to understand the relationships between female labor force participation and male and female unemployment.

The first chapter relates the size of the present-day LGBT population to the discovery of gold during the nineteenth century gold rushes. Comparing the surroundings of gold rush counties to other mining counties, we find that there are currently 15% more same-sex couples in former gold rush counties and that residents of these counties have more favorable attitudes toward homosexuality. Gold rush counties were initially isolated, mostly uninhabited and lacked strong formal institutions, which helped shaping pro-LGBT attitudes. Examining channels of persistence, we provide empirical evidence for selective migration and the lack of strong religious institutions. The second chapter examines the impact of gender focused labor legislation on women’s labor force participation and economic empowerment. We rely on historical legislative acts passed by state legislatures and exploit whether or not states passed regulatory laws regulating overall and industry specific employment and work conditions for women, night work laws and labor laws requiring provision of seats for working women. We exploit the fact that not all states enacted these laws as well as the variation in the timing of enactment of such laws. Our results show that women in comparison to men in treated states are more likely to be in the labor force post introduction of night work laws in comparison to control states. We also document the effect of industry-specific labor policies on women’s likelihood to be employed in the affected industry and in higher-wage occupations within the industry of interest. Policy implications of our findings endorse the adoption of labor laws in favor of women to advocate their empowerment through a higher involvement in the labor market and financial independence. The third chapter tests the doctrine of first effective settlement by relating early settlers’ culture to within state variation in gender norms in the United States. In 1973, the cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky postulated that the distinctive traits of early settlers at initial stages of institutional development may be crucial for cultural formation. I capture settlers’ culture using past female labor force participation, women’s suffrage and financial rights at their place of origin. I document the distinctive characteristics of settlers’ populations and provide suggestive evidence in support of the spatial (across locations) and vertical (over time) transmission of gender norms. My results show that women’s labor supply is higher, in both the short and long run, in U.S. counties that historically hosted a larger settler population originating from places with favorable gender attitudes. My findings shed new light on the importance of immigrants’ characteristics and their countries/states of origin for cultural formation in hosting societies.

In this dissertation research, the empirical analyses are developed to investigate the role of different factors on female's fertility decisions as well as female labor force participation. This research contains two major parts related to women: first, the impact of State Children Health Insurance (SCHIP) on female's fertility decision is examined. In 1997, Congress enacted the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to provide matching funds to states to provide health insurance for children who do not qualify for Medicaid. The implementation of SCHIP, however, differs across states. For example, some states provide SCHIP benefits to parents while others do not. Controlling for state and female characteristics, are women in states with more generous SCHIP benefits more likely to have children than are women in states with less generous benefits? After classifying state benefits as "generous" or "not generous" under different criteria, I do not find support that the type of SCHIP matters for future pregnancy decisions. Moreover, the association between pregnancy decisions and SCHIP do not change across ethnic groups, income levels, marital status, etc. Second, using a cross-sectional empirical specification, I examine whether female labor force participation (FLFP) in a cross-section of countries between 1985 and 2005 varies depending upon the religion practiced in these countries. I initially find that FLFP is lower in Muslim countries. However, the association between Islam and FLFP greatly diminishes once other controls are included in the regression, suggesting that Islam might not diminish FLFP as some have argued. Moreover, once these additional controls are included, the association between Islam and FLFP is similar to that between Catholicism and FLFP. Countries where Protestantism is prevalent or where no religion is practiced have higher FLFP. Besides, focusing on FLFP and using a panel data from 1980 to 2005, this study examines whether democratization is associated with subsequent labor force participation rates for women. I consider a panel to exploit the within country variation in political regimes and to employ country fixed effects that can control for cultural factors that influence both women's rights and political outcomes. We find a negative association between democratization (as measured by the Freedom House indices) and FLFP. Democratization appears to lower FLFP. Part of this finding stems from the decline in FLFP in former Communist countries. But the fall of Communism is not a complete explanation. Perhaps authoritarian regimes more generally pushed more people into the labor force to maintain higher output levels even when this was not optimal for individual households.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dong Li / This dissertation is a combination of three essays on spatial econometrics and labor economics. Essays 1 and 2 developed double length regression (DLR) tests for testing functional form and spatial dependence, which includes spatial error dependence and spatial lag dependence. More specifically, these essays derive the DLR joint, DLR one-direction, and DLR conditional tests for testing functional forms and spatial dependence. The essays also provide empirical examples and Monte Carlo simulations to examine how the DLR tests perform in the empirical work and how the power of the DLR test depends on changes in functional form and spatial dependence. The results suggested that DLR tests work similarly to its Lagrangian Multiplier (LM) counterpart for testing functional form and spatial dependence in the empirical example and simulations. The DLR tests do not require the second-order derivatives of the log-likelihood function, so they provide practitioners an easy-to-use method to test for functional forms and spatial dependence. Essay 3 investigates the effects of fertility on parental labor force participation and labor supply in Vietnam. The essay uses instrumental variable (IV) probit models to estimate the effects of fertility on parental labor force participation and the IV models to estimate the effects of fertility on parental labor supply. Using the gender of the first child and the same gender of the first two children as two instrumental variables, this essay found negative effects of fertility on maternal labor force participation and labor supply. It also found positive effects of fertility on paternal labor force participation and labor supply. The results suggest that fertility had the specialization effect on parental labor force participation and labor supply in Vietnam. The homogeneity test results indicate that the magnitude of the effects of fertility on parental labor force participation and labor supply is different among parents and locations.

No description available.