scholarly journals Family policy outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD Countries, 1975-2005

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rense Nieuwenhuis
Keyword(s):  
Family Policy ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Employment Gap ◽  
Women's Earnings ◽  
Reconciliation Policies

Women’s employment and earnings, as well as earnings inequality, have been rising in OECD countries in recent decades. This dissertation answers questions pertaining to how family policies have facilitated women in combining motherhood and employment, and how women’s earnings have affected inequality among households. Based on well over a million person-level observations, this study covers 18 OECD countries and a period from 1975 to 2005.Work-family reconciliation policies were shown to reduce the employment gap between mothers and women without children, while policies financially supporting families with children enlarge this motherhood-employment gap. Very long periods of leave, however, negatively affect the employment of mothers. More educated mothers benefit more from reconciliation policies than the less educated. Women’s rising earnings were found to have attenuated inequality among households. Family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment not only contribute to smaller inequality within households, but also among households.

scholarly journals Family policy as an institutional context of economic inequality

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rense Nieuwenhuis ◽  
Ariana Need ◽  
Henk van der Kolk
Keyword(s):  
Family Policy ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Tax Benefits ◽  
Contextual Determinants ◽  
Women's Earnings

It is demonstrated that family policies are an important aspect of the institutional context of earnings inequality among coupled households. Although seldom integrated into prominent analyses of economic inequality, women’s earnings are consistently found to reduce relative inequality among households. This means that family policies, as well-known determinants of women’s employment and earnings, are important contextual determinants of economic inequality. Using Luxembourg Income Study data from 18 OECD countries in the period 1981–2008, this study demonstrates that women have higher earnings, and that their earnings reduce inequality among coupled households more in institutional contexts with generous paid leave and public childcare. We found no sizeable association between financial support policies, such as family allowances and tax benefits to families with children, and the degree to which women’s earnings contribute to inequality among coupled households. Family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment and earnings are associated with less economic inequality among coupled households.

Women’s earnings and household inequality in OECD countries, 1973–2013

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rense Nieuwenhuis ◽  
Henk van der Kolk ◽  
Ariana Need
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Labor Force Participation ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Female Labor Force Participation ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Female Labor ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Household Inequality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women's Earnings

This article shows that women’s rising earnings contributed to reducing inequality in household earnings, with respect to couples. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) on 1,148,762 coupled households, covering 18 OECD countries and the period from 1973 to 2013. In this period, women’s share of household earnings grew, spouses’ earnings became more strongly and positively correlated in various countries, and inequality in women’s earnings was reduced. Inequality in household earnings increased due to the rising correlation between spouses’ earnings, but was reduced more by the decline of inequality in women’s earnings. Had women’s earnings remained unchanged since the 1970s and 1980s, inequality in household earnings would have been higher around 2010 in all observed OECD countries. Household inequality was reduced least by trends in women’s earnings in countries with a long history of high female labor-force participation, such as Finland (3% reduction) and Sweden (5%), and most in countries that observed a stronger increase in female labor-force participation in recent decades such as Spain (31%) and the Netherlands (41%). As more countries are reaching a plateau in the growth of women’s employment and earnings, the potential for further stimulating women’s employment and earnings to counter both women’s and household inequality seems to be increasingly limited.

scholarly journals Does Family Policy Influence Women’s Employment?: Reviewing the Evidence in the Field

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Ferragina
Keyword(s):  
Family Policy ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Employment Outcomes ◽  
High Income ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Choice Strategy

During the past two decades, the debate over the relation between family policy and women’s employment in high-income countries has grown in prominence. Nevertheless, the evidence proposed in different disciplines – sociology, politics, economics and demography – remains scattered and fragmented. This article addresses this gap, discussing whether family policy regimes are converging and how different policies influence women’s employment outcomes in high-income countries. The main findings can be summarized as follows: family policy regimes (‘Primary Caregiver Strategy’, ‘Choice Strategy’, ‘Primary Earner Strategy’, ‘Earning Carer Strategy’, ‘Mediterranean Model’) continues to shape women’s employment outcomes despite some process of convergence towards the Earning Carer Strategy; the shortage of childcare and the absence of maternal leave curtail women’s employment; long parental leave seems to put a brake to women’s employment; unconditional child benefits and joint couple’s taxation negatively influence women’s employment but support horizontal redistribution; policies and collective attitudes interact, influencing women’s behaviour in the labour market; and the effect of policies is moderated/magnified by individual socioeconomic characteristics, that is, skills, class, education, income, ethnicity and marital status. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for future research.

scholarly journals Trends in Women’s Employment and Poverty Rates in OECD Countries: A Kitagawa–Blinder–Oaxaca Decomposition

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rense Nieuwenhuis ◽  
Wim Van Lancker ◽  
Diego Collado ◽  
Bea Cantillon
Keyword(s):  
Employment Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Employment Rate ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Employment Rates ◽  
Very High ◽  
Observation Period

Abstract Although employment growth is propagated as being crucial to reduce poverty across EU and OECD countries, the actual impact of employment growth on poverty rates is still unclear. This study presents novel estimates of the association between macro-level trends in women’s employment and trends in poverty, across 15 OECD countries from 1971 to 2013. It does so based on over 2 million household-level observations from the LIS Database, using Kitagawa–Blinder–Oaxaca (KBO) decompositions. The results indicate that an increase of 10% points in women’s employment rate was associated with a reduction of about 1% point of poverty across these countries. In part, this reduction compensated for developments in men’s employment that were associated with higher poverty. However, in the Nordic countries no such poverty association was found, as in these countries women’s employment rates were very high and stable throughout the observation period. In countries that initially showed marked increases in women’s employment, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the United States, the initial increases in women’s employment rates were typically followed by a period in which these trends levelled off. Hence, our findings first and foremost suggest that improving gender equality in employment is associated with lower poverty risks. Yet, the results also suggest that the potential of following an employment strategy to (further) reduce poverty in OECD countries has, to a large extent, been depleted.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document