Education Driving the Rise in Dutch Female Employment Explanations for the Increase in Part-time Work and Female Employment in the Netherlands, Contrasted with Germany
Schettkat, Ronald () (Department of Economics, Utrecht University and IZA, Bonn) Yocarini, Lara (Department of Economics, Utrecht University)
Abstract
Over the last 15 years, the Netherlands has experienced a tremendous jobs boom, mainly in services and female employment. This has often been related to changes in the Dutch institutional environment. Using a model which allows for direct utility of work, we find that institutional arrangements like the tax and pension system - often cited as a cause of the Dutch employment boom - contributed only marginally, if at all, to the rise in female labor supply. The increasing proportion of women with higher education and a high valuation of market work were the two main causes of rising female participation in the labor force. In addition, greater flexibility in work schedules (part-time work) has relaxed a demand constraint, allowing more women to participate in the labor market. We find: - that the increased number of women with higher education has contributed substantially to the rise in female labor force participation; - that it was only in the 1990s that the "behavioral" component contributed as much to rising female labor force participation as the "structural" (educational) component; - that there is no evidence that institutional specifics or the change in institutional arrangements (taxes and pensions) favored female labor force participation or that they provided strong incentives for part-time work; - that the work orientation of Dutch women is stronger than that of German women but that there is no evidence of a substantial increase in work orientation during the 1990s; - that there is no evidence that women were previously demand-constrained in the sense that they desired to work part-time but were prevented by a scarcity of part-time work.
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
407.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
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