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The Service Sector and Female Market Work: Europe vs US

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  • Michelle Rendall

    (University of Zurich)

Abstract

Aggregate market hours differ dramatically across OECD countries. However, disaggregated by sex differences in market hours do not necessarily match aggregate market hour differences. Continental Europe has seen a smaller rise in formal female employment compared with the United States or Scandinavia. Additionally, Continental Europe has a substantially smaller service sector. These facts coincide with job requirements shifting from physical strength to intellectual abilities. This paper gives empirical evidence on why women predominately work in the service sector. Given the empirical evidence, a model where technical change favoring women, by increasing the service sector, drives female employment is developed. The key is households can produce a substitute for market services and women are, on average, less productive in sectors requiring more brawn, giving them a comparative advantage with respect to staying home and working in the service sector. Therefore, an economy that does not facilitate the movement of women into the labor market, by imposing high taxes, causes service production to remain at home. This reduces the demand for market services, which feeds back into low total hours worked by women (and the total economy). Subsidies to female employment can circumvent the high tax effect, but will lead to welfare loses.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2011 Meeting Papers with number 778.

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Date of creation: 2011
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Handle: RePEc:red:sed011:778

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  1. Richard Rogerson, 2007. "Taxation and market work: is Scandinavia an outlier?," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 59-85, July.
  2. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner, 2004. "Marriage and Divorce since World War II: Analyzing the Role of Technological Progress on the Formation of Households," Economie d'Avant Garde Research Reports 8, Economie d'Avant Garde, revised Apr 2008.
  3. Albanesi, Stefania & Olivetti, Claudia, 2007. "Gender Roles and Technological Progress," CEPR Discussion Papers 6352, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1991. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963-1987: Supply and Demand Factors," NBER Working Papers 3927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Mehmet Yorukoglu, 2005. "Engines of Liberation," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 109-133.
  6. Todd Schoellman, 2009. "The Occupations and Human Capital of U.S. Immigrants," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2009_19, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
  7. Michelle Rendall, 2010. "Brain versus brawn: the realization of women's comparative advantage," IEW - Working Papers 491, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
  8. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2010. "A Quantitative Analysis of the Evolution of the U.S. Wage Distribution, 1970-2000," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 227-276 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Richard Rogerson, 2008. "Structural Transformation and the Deterioration of European Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 235-259, 04.
  10. Ingram, Beth F. & Neumann, George R., 2006. "The returns to skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 35-59, February.
  11. Peter Rupert & Richard Rogerson & Randall Wright, 1994. "Estimating substitution elasticities in household production models," Staff Report 186, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
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Cited by:
  1. Holter, Hans A & Chakraborty, Indraneel & Stepanchuk, Serhiy, 2012. "Marriage Stability, Taxation and Aggregate Labor Supply in the U.S. vs. Europe," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2012:7, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.

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