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Skills or culture? An analysis of the decision to work by immigrant women in Italy

Author

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  • Antonio Accetturo

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Luigi Infante

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

Activity and employment rates for immigrant women in many industrialized countries display a great variability across national groups. The aim of this paper is to assess whether this well-known fact is due to a voluntary decision (i.e. large reservation wages by the immigrants) or to an involuntary process in that the labour market evaluation of their skills is low. This is done by estimating the reservation wages for each individual in the dataset. Our results show that low activity and employment rates for certain national groups are not associated with high reservation wages. This implies that low participation should not be interpreted as a voluntary decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Accetturo & Luigi Infante, 2011. "Skills or culture? An analysis of the decision to work by immigrant women in Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 815, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_815_11
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Livia Ortensi, 2015. "Engendering the fertility-migration nexus: The role of women's migratory patterns in the analysis of fertility after migration," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(53), pages 1435-1468.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reservation wages; female labour supply; cross-national differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

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