Employment rates of Mexican women increased 26 percentage points in the last 23 years. The underlying factors driving this trend are the main motivation for this study. My two explanatory hypotheses are the following: there is a lower 'motherhood penalty,' and a higher preschool enrollment encouraged women's employment. In addition, I estimate the gender gap in weekly wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits. To test these two hypotheses, I decompose changes, over the last two decades, in payoffs and endowments of 'motherhood.' Second, I measure the effect of changes in preschool enrollment on mothers' employment. In addition, I also estimate the gender gaps in wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits, incorporating a more precise measure of job experience than previously used, and measures of cognitive ability and non-cognitive traits (formerly unaccounted for in Mexican studies). My goal is to provide an explanation of the mechanisms that encouraged women's employment in Mexico, and to estimate the possible gender differences in earnings that might prevent a potentially larger progress of women in the Mexican labor market.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D8P26W8J |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | De la Cruz Toledo, Elia |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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