IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecpoli/v35y2020i104p635-677..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The changing nature of gender selection into employment over the great recession

Author

Listed:
  • Juan J Dolado
  • Cecilia García-Peñalosa
  • Linas Tarasonis

Abstract

SUMMARYThe Great Recession has strongly influenced employment patterns across skill and gender groups in EU countries. We analyse how these changes in workforce composition might distort comparisons of conventional measures of gender wage gaps via non-random selection of workers into EU labour markets. We document that male selection (traditionally disregarded) has become positive during the recession, particularly in Southern Europe. As for female selection (traditionally positive), our findings are twofold. Following an increase in the labour-force participation of less-skilled women, due to an added-worker effect, these biases declined in some countries where new female entrants were able to find jobs, whereas they went up in other countries which suffered large female employment losses. Finally, we document that most of these changes in selection patterns were reversed during the subsequent recovery phase, confirming their cyclical nature.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan J Dolado & Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Linas Tarasonis, 2020. "The changing nature of gender selection into employment over the great recession," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 35(104), pages 635-677.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:35:y:2020:i:104:p:635-677.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/epolic/eiaa025
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2009. "Job Polarization in Europe," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 58-63, May.
    2. David H. Autor & David Dorn, 2013. "The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1553-1597, August.
    3. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2008. "Unequal Pay or Unequal Employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 621-654, October.
    4. Christofides, Louis N. & Polycarpou, Alexandros & Vrachimis, Konstantinos, 2013. "Gender wage gaps, ‘sticky floors’ and ‘glass ceilings’ in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 86-102.
    5. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    6. Julia Bredtmann & Sebastian Otten & Christian Rulff, 2014. "Husband’s Unemployment and Wife’s Labor Supply – The Added Worker Effect across Europe," Economics Working Papers 2014-13, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    7. Keane, Michael & Moffitt, Robert & Runkle, David, 1988. "Real Wages over the Business Cycle: Estimating the Impact of Heterogeneity with Micro Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(6), pages 1232-1266, December.
    8. Gronau, Reuben, 1974. "Wage Comparisons-A Selectivity Bias," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1119-1143, Nov.-Dec..
    9. Manuel Arellano & Stéphane Bonhomme, 2017. "Quantile Selection Models With an Application to Understanding Changes in Wage Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1-28, January.
    10. Bell, David N.F. & Blanchflower, David G., 2010. "UK Unemployment in the Great Recession," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 214, pages 3-25, October.
    11. George-Levi Gayle & Limor Golan, 2012. "Estimating a Dynamic Adverse-Selection Model: Labour-Force Experience and the Changing Gender Earnings Gap 1968--1997," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 227-267.
    12. Engel, Melissa & Schaffner, Sandra, 2012. "How to Use the EU-SILC Panel to Analyse Monthly and Hourly Wages," Ruhr Economic Papers 390, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    13. Bowlus, Audra J, 1995. "Matching Workers and Jobs: Cyclical Fluctuations in Match Quality," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(2), pages 335-350, April.
    14. Derek Neal, 2004. "The Measured Black-White Wage Gap among Women Is Too Small," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 1-28, February.
    15. Jenkins, Stephen P. & Brandolini, Andrea & Micklewright, John & Nolan, Brian (ed.), 2012. "The Great Recession and the Distribution of Household Income," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199671021, December.
    16. Julia Bredtmann & Sebastian Otten & Christian Rulff, 2018. "Husband’s Unemployment and Wife’s Labor Supply: The Added Worker Effect across Europe," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 71(5), pages 1201-1231, October.
    17. Olympia Bover & Pilar García-Perea & Pedro Portugal, 2000. "Labour market outliers: Lessons from Portugal and Spain," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(31), pages 380-428.
    18. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    19. Yuichi Kitamura & William Johnson & Derek Neal, 2000. "Evaluating a Simple Method for Estimating Black-White Gaps in Median Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 339-343, May.
    20. Casey B. Mulligan & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Selection, Investment, and Women's Relative Wages Over Time," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 1061-1110.
    21. Samuel Bentolila & Andrea Ichino, 2008. "Unemployment and consumption near and far away from the Mediterranean," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 255-280, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa & Lara Vivian, 2022. "Hours Inequality," Working Papers hal-03872764, HAL.
    2. Maryna Tverdostup, 2023. "COVID-19 and Gender Gaps in Employment, Wages, and Work Hours: Lower Inequalities and Higher Motherhood Penalty," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(4), pages 713-735, December.
    3. Anthony B. Atkinson & Alessandra Casarico & Sarah Voitchovsky, 2018. "Top incomes and the gender divide," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 225-256, June.
    4. Kaya Ezgi, 2021. "Gender wage gap across the distribution: What is the role of within- and between-firm effects?," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, January.
    5. Kenza Elass, 2022. "The multiple dimensions of selection into employment," AMSE Working Papers 2219, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    6. Borjas, George J. & Edo, Anthony, 2021. "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration," IZA Discussion Papers 14261, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Elass, Kenza, 2024. "Male and female selection effects on gender wage gaps in three countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    8. Gallego Granados, Patricia & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2019. "Selection into Employment and the Gender Wage Gap across the Distribution and over Time," IZA Discussion Papers 12859, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Seonho Shin, 2022. "To work or not? Wages or subsidies?: Copula-based evidence of subsidized refugees’ negative selection into employment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 2209-2252, October.
    10. Kenza Elass, 2022. "The multiple dimensions of selection into employment," French Stata Users' Group Meetings 2022 06, Stata Users Group.
    11. Kenza Elass, 2022. "The multiple dimensions of selection into employment," Working Papers hal-03788508, HAL.
    12. Claudia Hupkau & Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela, 2022. "Work and children in Spain: challenges and opportunities for equality between men and women," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 243-268, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juan J. Dolado & Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Linas Tarasonis, 2016. "The Changing Nature of Gender Selection into Employment: Europe over the Great Recession," Working Papers halshs-01326316, HAL.
    2. Patricia Gallego Granados, 2019. "The Part-Time Wage Gap across the Wage Distribution," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1791, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2008. "Unequal Pay or Unequal Employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 621-654, October.
    4. Seonho Shin, 2022. "To work or not? Wages or subsidies?: Copula-based evidence of subsidized refugees’ negative selection into employment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 2209-2252, October.
    5. Seonho Shin, 2021. "Were they a shock or an opportunity?: The heterogeneous impacts of the 9/11 attacks on refugees as job seekers—a nonlinear multi-level approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2827-2864, November.
    6. Gallego Granados, Patricia & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2019. "Selection into Employment and the Gender Wage Gap across the Distribution and over Time," IZA Discussion Papers 12859, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence Kahn & Nikolai Boboshko & Matthew Comey, 2021. "Th Impact of Selection into the Labor Force on the Gender Wage Gap," CESifo Working Paper Series 9103, CESifo.
    8. Ulf Nielsson & Herdis Steingrimsdottir, 2018. "The signalling value of education across genders," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1827-1854, June.
    9. Richard Blundell & James P. Ziliak & Hugo Lopez, 2023. "Labour market inequality and the changing life cycle profile of male and female wages," IFS Working Papers W23/16, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    10. Chi, Wei & Li, Bo, 2014. "Trends in China’s gender employment and pay gap: Estimating gender pay gaps with employment selection," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 708-725.
    11. Matthias Westphal & Daniel A Kamhöfer & Hendrik Schmitz, 2022. "Marginal College Wage Premiums Under Selection Into Employment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(646), pages 2231-2272.
    12. Marjan Petreski & Nikica Blazevski & Blagica Petreski, 2014. "Gender Wage Gap when Women are Highly Inactive: Evidence from Repeated Imputations with Macedonian Data," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 393-411, December.
    13. Ahrsjö, Ulrika & Niknami, Susan & Palme, Mårten, 2021. "Wage Inequality, Selection and the Evolution of the Gender Earnings Gap in Sweden," Research Papers in Economics 2021:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    14. Iván Fernández‐Val & Aico van Vuuren & Francis Vella & Franco Peracchi, 2023. "Selection and the distribution of female real hourly wages in the United States," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(2), pages 571-607, May.
    15. Kaya, Ezgi, 2014. "Gender Wage Gap Trends in Europe: The Role of Occupational Allocation and Skill Prices," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2014/23, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    16. Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2022. "The gender pay gap: what can we learn from Northern Ireland? [Women’s labour market participation in Northern Ireland: a re-examination of the ‘traditionalism’ argument]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 94-114.
    17. Amairisa Koukia & Robert M. Sauer, 2022. "Remote Work, Children’s Health and the Racial Gap in Female Wages," CHILD Working Papers Series 104 JEL Classification: C, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    18. Kouki, Amairisa & Sauer, Robert M., 2022. "Remote Work, Children's Health and the Racial Gap in Female Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 15072, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    20. Iv'an Fern'andez-Val & Franco Peracchi & Aico van Vuuren & Francis Vella, 2018. "Selection and the Distribution of Female Hourly Wages in the U.S," Papers 1901.00419, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    J31;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:35:y:2020:i:104:p:635-677.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebruuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.