This paper looks at macro level data to measure the influence religion has played on female labor force participation (FLFP) rates between 1980 and 2005. It also attempts to find if this influence has changed over time. It then focuses specifically on African and post-communist nations as that is where some of the major religious changes have taken place in the last few decades. There is no clear pattern of an increasing or decreasing influence of religion on FLFP rates. Rather, different religions in different parts of the world affect FLFP in different ways. Finally, this paper looks specifically at Islamic and Catholic nations to see what variables have an effect on rising FLFP rates in those countries.

Female labor force participation rate in Turkey has been consistently lower than the participation rate in many of the similar developing countries. In addition to country specific factors that prevent increased participation of women, the Turkish economy has been passing through a liberalization program since 1980s which also affects the structure of female labor force in many aspects. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the patterns in the position of women in the labor force during 1988 -2008 in Turkey. The period under concern can be identified as one under which the country has largely completed its transformation within the structural reform programs. A major question that is investigated in this thesis is whether the female labor force has been affected differently than men during the period under concern. Employing structural decomposition and the factor content analyses, impacts of changing production patterns and foreign trade on female labor force are examined. Hence, the present study constitutes a basis for studies that aim to develop policy implications for increased female labor force participation in Turkey.

Through quantitative and qualitative methods, this dissertation endeavors to explain why the rate of female labor force participation (FLFP) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the lowest in the world. Using panel data models for fifty-four developing countries over thirty-five years, the first essay suggests that the most likely factor affecting the rate of FLFP negatively in MENA is the institution of patriarchy. Being part of MENA, which is characterized primarily by the institution of patriarchy, is associated with lower than average FLFP. Oil income appears to have a positive effect on FLFP for countries outside MENA but no effect for countries inside MENA. Moreover, Muslim countries outside MENA do not have lower than average FLFP, while Muslim countries in MENA do. Using ten proxies for patriarchy, the second essay quantifies patriarchy in order to compare MENA countries with the rest of the world. Using principle component analysis (PCA), the study measures patriarchy for fifty-nine developing countries over thirty years. The technique creates three main components for patriarchy, namely; the gender gap in education and demography, children’s survival rate, and participation in public spheres. The results show that MENA has the highest level of patriarchy with regard to women’s participation in public spheres, education and demography compared with non MENA countries. The region’s culture and religion seem to be associated with high levels of patriarchy in MENA. The third essay focuses on women’s unpaid work as well as women’s participation in the informal sector in MENA. The results point to a severe undercounting of women’s work. Since women are expected to provide care and produce goods and services for their family at home, women do not participate in the formal labor force in large numbers. Because of the patriarchal culture, patriarchal family laws and labor laws, many women including educated women have to choose to work in the informal sector in MENA. Since women’s unpaid work and their participation in the informal sector are not recorded in labor statistics, the MENA region appears to have a lower rate of FLFP than it does in reality.

This thesis explores the intersection of politics, religious ideology, and gender norms in the context of the Turkish labor market. I aim to shed light on the increasing interplay of these forces under AKP governance and, by extension, provide a rationale for Turkish women’s consistently low labor force participation. Further, I intend to expose that, despite introducing several legal reforms geared towards promoting gender equality, the party continues to frame the traditional family unit as the main pillar of social stability, thereby forcing women into a domestic box from which they have not been able to escape. I hypothesize that several of the AKP’s reforms, which involve various domains of Turkish society—the social security system, the institution of marriage, the family unit (specifically public childcare), and, more indirectly, the education system—have deterred Turkish women from entering and/or remaining in the labor force, as they are predicated on the party’s idealization of domesticity. Ultimately, I grapple with the ways in which the AKP’s policies and ideology have led to Turkish women’s low labor force participation rate—reported by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to be 32.37 percent in March 2017.[1] [1] “Labor Force Participation Rate, Female (% of Female Population Ages 15+) (Modeled ILO Estimate): Turkey,” The World Bank, November 2017, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locations=TR.

Our paper analyzes how paid parental leave schemes affect female labor force participation in Sweden. We examine this question on municipality level from 2003 to 2019. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a policy reform made in 2016 and analyze how it mainly affects women and their participation rate. It contributes to the fields of economics but also has a sociological aspect. We expect the policy reform to increase the share of parental leave days taken out by men, decrease the women's share, and increase female labor force participation. The empirical results do not show statistically significant evidence that the reform in 2016 increased or decreased women's participation rate. However, the share of net days taken out by men rises, and the share of female net days falls.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Maxwell / The questions that this paper intends to answer are: 1) Is there a U-shaped relationship between the female labor force participation (FLFP) rate and development in the present day? And 2) If we group countries geographically, will we see the U-shaped function outlined as development occurs over time? The U-shaped function is important because it allows us to predict the direction that the FLFP rate will move, dependent on a country's level of development. This prediction is crucial because there are endless gains of increased FLFP to both women and to society at large. Previous research has shown that in a snapshot in time (1985), there was evidence of the U-shaped function. However, there has been little research on how the function has played out throughout the past 30+ years. This paper finds that the U- shaped function remains robust to present day data. However, grouping countries geographically does not always produce results that support movement along the U-shaped function. Having a clearer understanding of the trends that FLFP follows through development will allow us to more successfully monitor and create policy to help women and society at large reap the benefits of increased women in the workforce. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

This thesis investigates the factors that affect women's bargaining power within the household, in India. The first chapter introduces the literature on household bargaining mostly by describing how household outcomes like children's health indicators and expenditure pattern change with increase in resources under women's control. The second chapter describes the conceptual framework for intra-household bargaining. It discusses the two broad topics – household bargaining models and gendered institutions, that can be used to identify avenues for increasing women's bargaining power within the household. In chapters three and four, I analyze the factors that determine women's power position, using data on women's involvement in household decision making from a nationally representative longitudinal household survey (India Human Development Survey). The survey was conducted in over 40,000 Indian households, which covers over 200,000 individuals. In the third chapter, I investigate the effect of women's labor force participation on her involvement in household decision making. After addressing the issues of endogeneity using a fixed effects model, I find that her labor market participation significantly increases her involvement in decision making process, which can be seen as a direct outcome of her increased bargaining power. In my fourth chapter I analyze whether the women's bargaining power within the household increases with the presence of female politicians at both state and local level. Studying the causal impact of a variable like female political representation is generally riddled with concerns of endogeneity for existence of voter preference. Using share of seats won by women in man-woman close elections as an instrument for overall female representation in in a fixed effect model, I show that an increase in number of female state legislators can actually lead to an increase in the bargaining power of women. This chapter further shows that increase in women's involvement in decision making process in the household is also associated with the female political representation at local level. The fifth chapter concludes the dissertation by making policy recommendation for strengthening women's bargaining position within the household. / Ph. D.

This dissertation consists of three essays studying the determination and evolution of labor supply in China. The analysis especially focuses on the labor market behavior of the wage workers with urban registration (Hukou). The first chapter outlines the dissertation by briefly discussing the motivations, methods, and main findings in each of the following chapters. Chapter two examines the evolution of female labor supply in urban China. Female labor force participation rate in China has been declining rapidly over the last three decades. Using a time series of cross-sections from the Chinese Household Income Project Series (CHIPS), this chapter attempts to systematically relate the decrease in female labor force participation to the socio-economic changes happening in China during the same period, and assess their respective contributions. Adopting both linear and non-linear decomposition techniques, the results show that during 1988-1995, changes in population age distribution and family size both contribute, during 1995-2002, age effect dominates, and during 2002-2007, non-labor income effect dominates in explaining the decreasing trend in female labor force participation. Chapter three investigates the impact of social norms on married women's labor supply decision in China. Using data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) and the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find a strong and robust positive correlation between the labor supply behavior of a married woman and the former work experience of her mother-in-law. Our estimation results indicate that being raised by a working mother influences both a man's attitude toward gender roles and his household productivity, and therefore married women whose mothers-in-law were not working are themselves significantly less likely to participate in the labor force. The last chapter evaluates the labor market consequence of rural-to-urban migration in China. Starting from the mid-1990s, there is a remarkable increase in the number of migrant workers in cities, from around 39 million in 1997 to 145 million by 2009 (Meng et al. 2013). Chapter four intends to explore how does this important economic event affect the labor market conditions of urban residents. Specifically, we estimate the possible employment and earnings displacement effects of rural-to-urban migration on urban residents by exploiting regional variation in the rural migrant share of education-experience cells. We use multiple sets of instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity problems associated with the rural migrant ratio in a city. The estimation results are consistent with the predictions of the textbook model of a competitive labor market, indicating the inflow of rural migrants reduces the wage and labor supply of competing urban residents. / Ph. D.

This dissertation consists of three manuscripts analyzing labor market dynamics in West Virginia and the Appalachian Region. The first manuscript examines the dynamic effects of national, regional, and local labor market shocks on labor force participation rates in Appalachia. A dynamic factor model with time-varying loading parameters and stochastic volatility is used to explore the synchronicity and divergence between state labor force participation rates within and outside the Appalachian region. We find that the choice of time and state is crucial to the relative importance of the level of synchronization on observed change in LFPR variations. Our findings can help better target labor policy by taking advantage of the sensitivity exhibited by each state to various labor market conditions. The second manuscript examines the dynamic effects of state, Metro/Non-Metro, and county labor market shocks on labor force participation rates in West Virginia. In the first stage, using a dynamic factor model, we find that non-metropolitan and county-specific components are dominant contributors to the observed variations in the change in West Virginia LFPRs. In the second stage, using a fixed effects panel model, we find county demographics, education levels, income, access to interstate highways, and industry composition are useful covariates for explaining the variance contributions of the state, metro/non-metro and county factors. The third manuscript uses cointegration analysis in the presence of structural breaks to determine whether the Unemployment Invariance Hypothesis exists in West Virginia. Using monthly labor force data from 1976 - 2022, we find mixed support for the unemployment invariance, added worker effect, and discouraged worker effect hypotheses over multiple sub-sample periods. These results suggest that labor markets are temporally-dynamic, and a one-size-fits-all approach could prove disadvantageous to growth. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation focuses on labor market dynamics in West Virginia and the Appalachian Region. In the first of three manuscripts, we investigate how much U.S. state labor force participation rates move together nationally, and within the Appalachian Region. We find that how much labor force participation rates move together across the U.S. and within the Appalachian Region depends on the choice of time and state. In the second manuscript, we examine how much West Virginia county labor force participation rates move together across the state and within the Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan regions. We also study how county characteristics such as industry composition and education levels influence the variation in how much labor force participation rates move together. We find that Non-metropolitan county labor force participation rates exhibit similar dynamic behavior and that education, personal income, access to highways, and industry composition of the counties influences how much the rates move together at the different levels. In the third manuscript, we investigate whether changes in the unemployment rate in West Virginia result influences that state's labor force participation rate in the long-run. We find that evidence of said long-run relationship albeit changing over time. We posit that the relationship dynamics are largely explained by the ensuing labor market and economic conditions. By extension, labor market policies and interventions should be timely and flexible.

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.