Caring Labor, Wellbeing and Gender Inequalities
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (CST)
- Chair: Ipek Ilkkaracan, Istanbul Technical University
The Impact of Intergenerational Co-Residence and Female Labor Participation in Urban
Abstract
Female labor force participation rate in China has experienced a significant decline since 1980s despite the rise in the level of education that women receive. Traditionally, extended families are the most common living arrangements in Chinese society. On the one hand, grandparents serve as the dominant substitutes in childcare and household duties due to limited alternatives to parental childcare and domestic duties. On the other hand, typical young Chinese couples tend to shoulder the responsibility of supporting four seniors as a result of family planning policy implemented in late 1970’s. In this paper, I investigate the impact of intergenerational living arrangement on maternal labor supply in urban China. I employ instrumental variables approach to overcome the endogeneity provoked by intergenerational living arrangements. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, both OLS and IV estimations yield similar results that women living in co-residing families are about 7 percent more likely to participate in the labor market in urban areas. Moreover, having an old parent in the family reduces the time that a married women spent on household chores by 0.146 hour per day. The results implies that the decline in female labor force participation in urban China could possibly result from a declining share of multi-generational families. As the Chinese population ages, identifying residence models of the elderly and their impacts on co-residing female are critical for making future family planning and social inclusion policies.Why Care for the Care Economy: Empirical Evidence from Nepal
Abstract
Using data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS)-III-2010/11, we examine the effectof unpaid care work on the capability of care providers to earn a living. The conceptual framework, motivated by the Capability Approach, delineates contemporaneous and compounding effects of undertaking unpaid care work on the caregiver and its wider intergenerational and societal effects. Using an instrumental variables approach, the empirical analysis identifies adverse gender differentiated causal impact of time devoted to caregiving: While women and men experience commensurate declines in their weekly employment hours; the likelihood of being employed decreases only for women. The study is one of the few least developed-country studies that use time-use survey data to provide evidence on the impact of unpaid work and the first study for Nepal. This research has important policy implications as it focuses on a prevalent aspect of households’ livelihood in Nepal: the provisioning of care and its effects on individual well-being and on broader development outcomes for Nepal. The paper draws the attention of policymakers to the need for greater public investment in care infrastructure and services along with communitybased initiatives.
Valuing Unpaid Care Work in Sri Lanka using the National Time Use Survey 2017
Abstract
Valuing care work is important because it recognizes the worth of unpaid care, promotes more “accurate and comprehensive” valuation of the work that takes place in economies (UNDP 1995) and strengthens the argument that those who provide unpaid work to family or household members are entitled to a fair share and control over income generated by those members (Budlender 2013). This study is the first study to value unpaid work in Sri Lanka using the National Time Use Survey 2017. It uses an input, replacement method approach with both generalist and specialist wages, drawing on wage data from the 2019 Labour Force Survey. Time use patterns reveal unsurprisingly that more women than men engage in unpaid work in general. Results indicate that the value of unpaid house work, care work and voluntary work in Sri Lanka is by no means negligible, being equal to over 10 percent of GDP in the lowest scenario, and over 40 percent of GDP in the best scenario. The vast bulk of this work is conducted by women, who contribute over 85 percent of the value added from unpaid work. These results make a strong case for the recognition of the contribution that Sri Lanka’s women make through unpaid work.Women’s Work and Well-being: Does Microfinance Matter?
Abstract
Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women’s economic well-being through greater labour market participation in general and increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women’s attitudes toward and participation in work is not fully understood. We fill this gap by combining data on branch locations of the major microfinance institutions with a household survey data specially designed to capture economic lives of Bangladeshi women. This facilitates a quasi-experimental design allowing us to implement a spatial regression discontinuity (RD) design to identify the effect of access to microfinance. Formal tests indicate no discontinuity in other household characteristics at the boundary of the serving areas of branches. Our RD estimates indicate that access to credit has positive effects on women’s participation in traditional occupations (homestead farming and livestock rearing) but find no effect on participation in non-traditional occupations. Access to credit also increases likelihood that women are prevented from working by their husbands or other household members, increases their agreement with traditional beliefs in relation to gender, social and employment norms, and lowers their life satisfaction, financial satisfaction, health satisfaction and overall happiness.Discussant(s)
Aashima Sinha
,
University of Utah
Mieke Meurs
,
American University
Jinning Wang
,
University of Connecticut
Nudrat Faria Shreya
,
Limestone Analytics
Dileni Gunewardena
,
University of Peradeniya and Verite Research
JEL Classifications
- J7 - Labor Discrimination