This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. ASSA Annual Meeting
  3. 2022
  4. Preliminary Program
  5. Structural Transformation and Gender during the Course of Economic Development
« Back to Results

Structural Transformation and Gender during the Course of Economic Development

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)

Hosted By: Econometric Society
  • Chair: Claudia Olivetti, Dartmouth College

Labor Migration, Capital Accumulation, and the Structure of Rural Labor Markets

Taryn Dinkelman
,
University of Notre Dame

Abstract

Can migrant capital contribute to long-run structural change in sending community
labor markets? We study how rural labor markets in Malawi changed after exogenous
shocks to international labor migration opportunities. Merging archival data on sub-
national remittance flows with census data on employment, we track how work shifted
across sectors in places receiving different amounts of migrant earnings as a result of the
shocks. In labor markets receiving more migrant capital, workers -– particularly women
– moved out of farming and into more capital-intensive non-farm service sectors over
the next thirty years. High migrant capital areas accumulated more non-farm physical
capital and human capital, and were wealthier fifteen years after the migration episode.
Our results demonstrate that temporary international migration and the associated
remittances have the potential to change rural labor markets in the long run.

Foreign Direct Investment and Women: Impacts on Work, Marriage, and Childbirth

Natalia Drozdoff
,
Yale University
Brian McCaig
,
Wilfrid Laurier University
Nina Pavcnik
,
Dartmouth College

Abstract

We study how an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam affected employment outcomes, marriage ages and childbearing for young women. Between 2000 and 2017, the number of women employed in FDI jobs increased from 229 thousand to 2.8 million. We find that women in provinces that were more exposed to the increase in FDI manufacturing jobs are more likely to be employed in manufacturing and less likely to be married or have children at age 20. Our preliminary results suggest that FDI can impact not only women’s labor outcomes but also their family life decisions in a low-income country.

Allocation of Female Talent and Cross-Country Productivity Differences

Munseob Lee
,
University of California-San Diego

Abstract

The disparities in cross-country labor productivity are greater in agriculture than in other industries. I propose that the misallocation of female talent across sectors distorts productivity. I formalize the theory by using a general equilibrium Roy model with gender-specific frictions. If female workers experience higher frictions in non-agricultural sectors, then unproductive female workers will select into agricultural sector. From a sample of 66 countries, I find that low-income countries have higher frictions in non-agricultural industries. By setting frictions to US levels, agricultural labor productivity increases by 16.6 percent and GDP per capita increases by 1.4 percent, primarily in low-income countries.

Structural Transformation and U-Shaped Female Employment

L. Rachel Ngai
,
London School of Economics
Claudia Olivetti
,
Dartmouth College
Barbara Petrongolo
,
University of Oxford

Abstract

We build a consistent measure of female employment for the US over the last one hundred and fifty years -- encompassing intensive and extensive margins -- combining data from the US population Census and several early state-level surveys on various personal and economic circumstances of individuals. The resulting measure of employment, which includes paid work as well as unpaid work in family business and corrects for other sources of under-reporting, displays a U-shape over time.

We empirically and theoretically relate the U-shaped labour supply to the process of structural transformation, and namely the reallocation of labour from female-intensive agriculture into male-intensive manufacturing at early stages of development, and from manufacturing into female-intensive services at later stages. We propose a multisector model of the economy, where the interplay between uneven productivity growth and consumption complementarities across sectors predicts the modernization of agriculture and decline of family farms, the rise in manufacturing and services, and the marketization of home production. The downward portion of the U-shaped pattern is associated with the decline in agricultural employment and the disappearance of the family farm, while the upward portion is driven by the expansion of the service economy, to the detriment of manufacturing, and the marketization of home production.
JEL Classifications
  • F6 - Economic Impacts of Globalization
  • J1 - Demographic Economics