Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

Feminist Economics of Inequality, Development, and Growth

Abstract This study examines connections between intergroup inequality and macroeconomic outcomes, considering various channels through which gender, growth, and development interact. It upholds the salience not only of equality in opportunities but also equality in outcomes. The contribution argues that inequalities based on gender, race, ethnicity, and class undermine the ability to provision and expand capabilities, and it examines the macroeconomic policies that are likely to promote broadly shared development. It explores how the macroeconomy acts as a structure of constraint in achieving gender equality and in turn how gender relations in areas like education and wage gaps can have macro-level impacts. Further, it underscores that the interaction of the macroeconomy and gender relations depends on the structure of the economy, the nature of job segregation, the particular measure of gender inequality, and a countrys international relations. Finally, it outlines policies for promoting gender equality as both an intrinsic goal and a step toward improving well-being.

War and women's work: evidence from the conflict in Nepal

This article examines how Nepal’s 1996–2006 civil conflict affected women’s decisions to engage in employment. Using three waves of the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, we employ a difference-in-difference approach to identify the impact of war on women’s employment decisions. Results indicate that women’s likelihood of employment increased as a consequence of the conflict, a conclusion that holds for self-employment decisions and is robust to numerous sensitivity tests. The findings support the argument that women’s additional employment—rather than greater dependence on remittances and subsistence work—serves as an important source of resilience during times of crisis.

The Impact of Protective Measures for Female Workers

Policies designed to protect female workers have controversial effects on labor market outcomes, both in theory and in practice. The analysis uses repeated cross‐sections of household survey data for Taiwan to estimate the impact of working‐hours restrictions and maternity benefits. Differential coverage across industrial sectors and demographic groups provides a unique opportunity to identify the impact of both policies in a single natural experiment framework. While working‐hours restrictions have a negative impact on womens actual hours worked and employment, maternity benefits increase these labor inputs, implying that women value the opportunity to return to jobs they might otherwise have to leave.

THE PERSISTENCE OF GENDER EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN TAIWAN, 1978-1992

During the 1980s, Taiwans industry and export mixes shifted toward higher-skill, technology-intensive products, and lower-skill, labor-intensive industries began moving abroad. Despite improvements in womens skills and educational attainment relative to mens, the mean gender earnings ratio between 1978 and 1992 remained at 65%. The authors analyze household survey data from Taiwans Manpower Utilization Survey to examine why rapid structural change was not accompanied by a narrowing of the gender gap. The results strongly suggest that large losses experienced by women in unmeasured gender-specific factors—which could reflect the effects of labor market intermittency, growing gender differences in unobserved skills, or an increase in wage discrimination against women—offset their relative gains in education and experience. Further evidence provides no support for a widening gender gap in labor force commitment or in unobserved skills, suggesting that wage discrimination against female workers increased over time.

Economic importance and statistical significance: Guidelines for communicating empirical research

Abstract A critical objective for many empirical studies is a thorough evaluation of both substantive importance and statistical significance. Feminist economists have critiqued neoclassical economics studies for an excessive focus on statistical machinery at the expense of substantive issues. Drawing from the ongoing debate about the rhetoric of economic inquiry and significance tests, this paper examines approaches for presenting empirical results effectively to ensure that the analysis is accurate, meaningful, and relevant for the conceptual and empirical context. To that end, it demonstrates several measurement issues that affect the interpretation of economic significance and are commonly overlooked in empirical studies. This paper provides guidelines for clearly communicating two distinct aspects of “significance” in empirical research, using prose, tables, and charts based on OLS, logit, and probit regression results. These guidelines are illustrated with samples of ineffective writing annotated to show weaknesses, followed by concrete examples and explanations of improved presentation.

Occupational Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap in a Dynamic East Asian Economy

Labor markets in the East Asian “miracle” economies have undergone profound changes in recent decades as their comparative advantage in low-wage labor diminished and jobs shifted toward higher-skill manufacturing and services. This study uses an occupational decomposition technique to examine how such shifts in East Asias occupational structures have affected trends in their gender wage gaps. The wage gap is decomposed into across-occupation and within-occupation factors that are each further separated into wage and employment components. Results based on a comprehensive labor force data set for Taiwan show that within-occupation pay discrepancies account for the bulk of gender wage inequity.

A Role-Playing Exercise for Development and International Economics Courses

A role-playing exercise is described in which students play the roles of various ministers advising the president in the resolution of the macroeconomic problems that arise with a natural resource boom. A framework for role playing is presented that has applications beyond this single issue.

FOOD ASSISTANCE THROUGH THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

Numerous public and private initiatives in the United States work to mitigate food insecurity and its unwelcome repercussions for childrens health and well-being. An increasingly popular program, the Food For Kids program originated by the Arkansas Rice Depot, seeks to reduce hunger among school-aged children by distributing ready-to-eat food in backpacks for participating students to take home for evening and weekend meals. This study assesses reasons for participation in the program and its impact on school-level indicators of student behavior and academic performance. Sample statistics from unique surveys made available by the Arkansas Rice Depot, a faith-based food bank, indicate that some parents cannot or do not properly feed their children due to insufficient economic means, illness, drug addiction, or a lack of willingness. The analysis also finds improvements in participating students’ self-esteem and behavior at school. Additional results from fixed effects regressions using school report-card data indicate a positive and significant program impact on eighth-grade standardized test scores in math and literacy.

Voice and Agency: Where Are We Now?

ABSTRACT This article examines how scholarship in feminist economics has developed and used evolving definitions of voice and agency, analyzing their expressions in the key domains of households, markets, and the public sphere. It builds on a rich body of work that explores the voice and agency of women and girls using bargaining theory, as well as behavioral and experimental economics, to understand inequalities in power and agency in relation to different institutional domains and socioeconomic processes. It also discusses each study in this volume, highlighting their contributions and drawing attention to critical gaps that remain in the literature.

A reversal of fortune for Korean women : explaining the 1983 upward turn in relative earnings

Between 1971 and 1983, Koreas mean gender earnings ration remained virtually stagnant at 47 percent. But after 1983, the earnings ration took a distinct turn upward. In other words, not until after 1983 did Korean women make any progress in closing the gender-earnings gap. when controlling for education, the analysis reveals a surprising drop in relative earning across education groups in the 1970s and early 1980s, and a recover thereafter. The author uses an extremely rich set of microdata (suitable for decomposition) to explain the trends in Koreas earnings differential. Results indicate that most of the 1983 reversal is attributable to a strong compression in market returns to skills and to narrowing gender differences in education and experience. The widening gender earnings differential across education groups before 1983 resulted primarily from a growing gender gap in unobserved characteristics. Growing gender differences in unmeasured ability or increased wage discrimination could explain this trend. After 1983, women with high school education or less benefit primarily from a dramatic narrowing in the economys distribution of market payoffs to skills, enough for women to begin to catch up to men relative earnings. A compression in the return to skills helped only some groups. Women with college educations did not experience increased benefits from changes in the market payoff to skills. Stricter enforcement of Koreas equal-pay-for-equal-work provision could help reduce the outright discrimination against women workers that might be the underlying problem. By boosting the potential of Koreas female labor force, stronger enforcement of Koreas equal opportunity provisions would improve the countrys economic productivity.Introduction Despite extremely rapid economic growth during the 1970s and early 1980s, the ratio of female to male earnings in Korea remained virtually stagnant at 47%. After 1983, women began to gain relative to men, and the earnings ratio reached 57% by 1992. When examining comparably educated women and men, the analysis reveals a surprising drop in the earnings ratio for each education group up to 1983 and a sharp rise thereafter. How can we explain this widening differential between male and female earnings in the earlier period and the narrowing after 1983? The answer to this question has strong implications for the types of human capital, including the level and quality of education, in which Korean women may choose to invest. Women’s investment choices will, in turn, affect the future productivity of Korea’s economy. Investigating women’s relative performance in Korea’s labor market also allows us to learn more about the behavior of wages in a very dynamic economy. The rich literature on gender gaps in the United States and Europe deals with economies that have, arguably, reached steady states. Hence our knowledge will be enriched by examining labor market outcomes in a rapidly growing economy, where women’s roles are often substantially different. Changes in macroeconomic conditions and labor market policies provide a backdrop for understanding the changes in earnings ratios for all education groups. The early 1980s marked the resumption of growth following the 1979 oil crisis, the 1980–81 Korean recession, and the ensuing adjustment period. As renewed growth generated new employment opportunities, the government relaxed its quotas on the number of college students, which in turn led to a flood of new college graduates in the labor market and a compression in the returns to schooling. In 1987, the government further relaxed labor market controls by liberaliz-