This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data


[ Papers | Articles | Software | Books | Chapters | Authors | Institutions | JEL Classification | NEP reports | Search | New papers by email | Author registration | Rankings | Volunteers | FAQ | Blog | Help! ]

Gender, Occupation Choice and the Risk of Death at Work

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
Thomas DeLeire
Helen Levy

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Abstract

Women and men tend to work in different occupations. There has been substantial movement over the last forty years toward a more even distribution of men and women across occupations, but differences persist. Although a great deal of research has been devoted to the measurement of trends in occupation segregation by gender, very little work has focused on the underlying job choice process that generates this segregation. What makes men and women choose the jobs they do? Using employment data from the 1995 - 1998 Current Population Surveys and data on occupational injuries and deaths from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we estimate conditional logit models of occupation choice as a function of the risk of work-related death and other job characteristics. Our results suggest that women choose safer jobs than men. Within gender, we find that single moms or dads are most averse to fatal risk, presumably because they have the most to lose. The effect of parenthood on married women is larger than its effect on married men, which is consistent with the idea that men’s contributions to raising children are more fully insured than women’s. Overall, men and women’s different preferences for risk can explain about one-quarter of the fact that men and women choose different occupations.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_01_22.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function:
Download Restriction: no

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago in its series Working Papers with number 0122.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2001
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:har:wpaper:0122

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Phone: 773-702-8400
Email:
Web page: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Eleanor Cartelli).

Related research
Keywords: gender; occupational choice; risk; safety;

Other versions of this item:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Siow, Aloysius, 1984. "Occupational Choice under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 631-45, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Robertson, D. & Symons, J., 1988. "The Occupational Choice Of British Children," Papers 325, London School of Economics - Centre for Labour Economics.
    Other versions:
  3. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2000. "Gender Differences in Pay," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 75-99, Fall. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Case, Anne & Paxson, Christina, 2001. "Mothers and others: who invests in children's health?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 301-328, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  5. Polachek, Solomon William, 1981. "Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(1), pages 60-69, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Boskin, Michael J, 1974. "A Conditional Logit Model of Occupational Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 389-98, Part I, M. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sherman Folland, 2006. "Value of life and behavior toward health risks: an interpretation of social capital," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 159-171. [Downloadable!]
  2. John Leeth & John Ruser, 2006. "Safety segregation: The importance of gender, race, and ethnicity on workplace risk," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 123-152, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? You can import bibliographic info in various formats into you bibliographic tool, or just into your word processor. See under "publisher info" on each abstract page.

This page was last updated on 2009-11-22.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.