IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2025_774.html

This Time It’s Different: The Role of Women’s Employment in Recessions

Author

Listed:
  • Titan Alon

  • Matthias Doepke

  • Jane Olmstead-Rumsey

  • James Symons-Hicks

  • Michèle Tertilt

Abstract

We study the transmission of macroeconomic shocks in a model of the household sec tor featuring single and married households, joint labor-supply decisions of women and men, and childcare needs that interact with the availability of remote work. Re cessions concentrated among women are deeper and more persistent than those con centrated among men, reflecting weaker within-family insurance and a new empir ical finding that women re-enter employment more slowly after job loss. Yet recov ery from the pandemic recession, which had a disproportionate impact on working women due to school closures and the sectoral distribution of job losses, was surpris ingly rapid. We show that in our model, the expansion of remote work and shifting caregiving norms after the pandemic raise female labor supply and men’s share of childcare, thereby accounting for the observed recovery. These changes permanently increase female participation and narrow the gender earnings gap, but their effect on future recessions is limited: greater labor force attachment among women weakens the added-worker effect but also accelerates labor market re-entry, leading to offset ting effects on aggregate recession dynamics.

Suggested Citation

  • Titan Alon & Matthias Doepke & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey & James Symons-Hicks & Michèle Tertilt, 2026. "This Time It’s Different: The Role of Women’s Employment in Recessions," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_774, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_774
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp774
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans-Martin von Gaudecker & Lenard Holler & Radost Holler & Christian Pugnaghi-Zimpelmann, 2024. "Can Work from Home Help Balance the Parental Division of Labor?," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 321, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    2. Adams-Prassl, Abi & Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2020. "Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: Evidence from real time surveys," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    3. Kate Prickett & Alexa Martin-Storey & Robert Crosnoe, 2015. "A Research Note on Time With Children in Different- and Same-Sex Two-Parent Families," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(3), pages 905-918, June.
    4. Glover, Andrew & Heathcote, Jonathan & Krueger, Dirk & Ríos-Rull, José-Víctor, 2023. "Health versus wealth: On the distributional effects of controlling a pandemic," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 34-59.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Houštecká, Anna & Koh, Dongya & Santaeulàlia-Llopis, Raül, 2021. "Contagion at work: Occupations, industries and human contact," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    2. Martial Foucault & Vincenzo Galasso, 2020. "Working After Covid-19: Cross-Country Evidence from Real-Time Survey Data," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-03455860, HAL.
    3. Atolia, Manoj & Papageorgiou, Chris & Turnovsky, Stephen J., 2021. "Re-opening after the lockdown: Long-run aggregate and distributional consequences of COVID-19," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    4. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5cmk499mce8lvosvi0jdis0dla is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Bradley, Jake & Ruggieri, Alessandro & Spencer, Adam Hal, 2021. "Twin Peaks: Covid-19 and the labor market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    6. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Dirk Krueger & André Kurmann & Etienne Lalé & Alexander Ludwig & Irina Popova, 2023. "The Fiscal and Welfare Effects of Policy Responses to the Covid-19 School Closures," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(1), pages 35-98, March.
    7. Nuarpear Lekfuangfu & Suphanit Piyapromdee & Ponpoje Porapakkarm & Nada Wasi, 2020. "On Covid-19: New Implications of Job Task Requirements and Spouse's Occupational Sorting," PIER Discussion Papers 133, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Sewon Hur, 2023. "The Distributional Effects Of Covid‐19 And Optimal Mitigation Policies," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(1), pages 261-294, February.
    9. Titan Alon & Matthias Doepke & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey & James Symons-Hicks & Michèle Tertilt, 2026. "This Time It’s Different: The Role of Women’s Employment in Recessions," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26203, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    10. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Francesca Caselli & Francesco Grigoli & Damiano Sandri & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2022. "Correction to: Mobility Under the COVID-19 Pandemic: Asymmetric Effects Across Gender and Age," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 70(1), pages 139-140, March.
    12. Lester C Hunt & Anqi Zhang & Shuonan Zhang, 2022. "Recession and Recovery of the Pandemic," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2022-05, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    13. Giovanni Bonaccorsi & Francesco Scotti & Andrea Flori & Fabio Pammolli, 2023. "Balancing health and economic impacts from targeted pandemic restrictions," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 1047-1083, September.
    14. Gus O'Donnell & Harry Begg, 2020. "Far from Well: The UK since COVID‐19, and Learning to Follow the Science(s)," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(4), pages 761-804, December.
    15. Crowley, Frank & Doran, Justin & Ryan, Geraldine, 2020. "The impact of Covid-19 restrictions on workers: Who is most exposed?," SRERC Working Paper Series SRERCWP2020-3, University College Cork (UCC), Spatial and Regional Economic Research Centre (SRERC).
    16. Toufique, M. M. K., 2020. "Why do some countries have more COVID-19 cases than others? Evidence from 70 most affected countries sans China," EconStor Preprints 222456, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. Sonja Settele & Cortnie Shupe, 2020. "Lives or Livelihoods? Perceived Tradeoffs and Public Demand for Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions," CEBI working paper series 20-17, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    18. Jacek Rothert, 2020. "Optimal federal redistribution during the uncoordinated response to a pandemic," Departmental Working Papers 64, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    19. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    20. Favero, Carlo A. & Ichino, Andrea & Rustichini, Aldo, 2020. "Restarting the economy while saving lives under Covid-19," CEPR Discussion Papers 14664, Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_774. 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: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    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.