IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/123208.html

Deceleration in female labor force participation in Latin America

Author

Listed:
  • Gasparini, Leonardo
  • Marchionni, Mariana

Abstract

After half a century of sustained growth, female labor force participation has decelerated in Latin America, especially among married vulnerable women. Based on a large database of microdata from household surveys, this paper documents this recent deceleration and provides evidence on the determinants. We argue that the fast economic growth experienced by the region in the 2000s was an important driving force: lower unemployment and higher earnings of male partners plus increased social assistance may have reduced the pressing need for vulnerable women to take low-quality jobs.

Suggested Citation

  • Gasparini, Leonardo & Marchionni, Mariana, 2017. "Deceleration in female labor force participation in Latin America," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123208, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:123208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123208/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blau, Francine D. & Kahn, Lawrence M., 2013. "Female Labor Supply: Why is the US Falling Behind?," IZA Discussion Papers 7140, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2013. "Female Labor Supply: Why Is the United States Falling Behind?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 251-256, May.
    3. Ximena Pena & Raquel Bernal & Diego Amador, 2013. "The rise in female participation in Colombia: Fertility, marital status or education?," Revista ESPE - Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, vol. 31(71), pages 54-63.
    4. Leonardo Gasparini & Mariana Marchionni, 2015. "Bridging Gender Gaps? The Rise and Deceleration of Female Labor Force Participation in Latin America: An overview," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0185, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    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. Diego Danny ONTANEDA JIMÉNEZ & Wilson Alejandro GUZMÁN ESPINOZA & Luis Rodrigo MENDIETA MUÑOZ & Monica RĂILEANU SZELES, 2022. "Cohort Analysis of Labor Participation and Sectoral Composition of Employment in Ecuador," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 67-87, October.
    2. Juan Pedro Eberhard & Javier Fernandez & Catalina Lauer, 2023. "Effects of maternity on labor outcomes and employment quality for women in Chile," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 2232965-223, December.
    3. Iregui-Bohórquez, Ana María & Melo-Becerra, Ligia Alba & Ramírez-Giraldo, María Teresa & Tribín-Uribe, Ana María & Zárate-Solano, Héctor M., 2024. "Unraveling the factors behind women’s empowerment in the labor market in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    4. Estefanía Galván, 2022. "Gender Identity and Quality of Employment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 409-436, April.
    5. Porto Natalia & Carella Laura & Rucci Ana Clara & Velazquez Cecilia, 2023. "Children living with disabilities and mother`s labor supply in developing countries: evidence from Argentina," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4686, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    6. Sehnbruch, Kirsten & Prieto Suarez, Joaquin & Vidal, Diego, 2025. "Stuck in a bad job? The dynamics of poor-quality employment in Chile, 2004–2019," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 128576, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Santiago Garganta & Leonardo Gasparini & Mariana Marchionni, 2017. "Cash transfers and female labor force participation: the case of AUH in Argentina," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, December.
    8. Guido Neidhöfer & Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa, 2019. "The Long(er)‐Term Impacts of Chile Solidario on Human Capital and Labor Income," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(S1), pages 209-244, December.
    9. Echeverría, Lucía & Menon, Martina & Perali, Federico & Berges, Miriam, 2019. "Intra-household inequality and child welfare in Argentina," Nülan. Deposited Documents 3051, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, Centro de Documentación.
    10. Svetlana Pimkina & Luciana de La Flor, 2020. "Promoting Female Labor Force Participation," World Bank Publications - Reports 34953, The World Bank Group.
    11. Mariano Tommasi & María Edo & Agustina Thailinger, 2021. "Familia y desarrollo humano en el siglo XXI. Revisión de la literatura internacional y algunos apuntes para el caso argentino," Working Papers 152, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised May 2021.
    12. Serrano, Joaquín & Gasparini, Leonardo & Marchionni, Mariana & Glüzmann, Pablo, 2019. "Economic cycle and deceleration of female labor force participation in Latin America," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 53, pages 1-013.
    13. Hoehn-Velasco, Lauren & Penglase, Jacob, 2023. "Changes in assortative matching and educational inequality: evidence from marriage and birth records in Mexico," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(4), pages 587-607, December.

    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. Natalia Ramírez Bustamante & Ana Maria Tribin Uribe & Carmiña O. Vargas, 2015. "Maternity and Labor Markets: Impact of Legislation in Colombia," Borradores de Economia 870, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Emanuele Forlani & Elisabetta Lodigiani & Concetta Mendolicchio, 2015. "Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(2), pages 452-492, April.
    3. Bustelo, Monserrat & Flabbi, Luca & Piras, Claudia & Tejada, Mauricio, 2019. "Female Labor Force Participation, Labor Market Dynamic and Growth in LAC," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 9420, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2021. "Too family friendly? The consequences of parent part-time working rights," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    5. Miguel Angel, 2023. "Differences in the labor market by gender and aggregate income," Sobre México. Revista de Economía, Sobre México. Temas en economía, vol. 1(7), pages 84-114.
    6. Cortes, Patricia & Pan, Jessica, 2016. "Prevalence of Long Hours and Skilled Women's Occupational Choices," IZA Discussion Papers 10225, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Marianne Bertrand, 2018. "Coase Lecture – The Glass Ceiling," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(338), pages 205-231, April.
    8. Mehrotra, Santosh & Parida, Jajati K., 2017. "Why is the Labour Force Participation of Women Declining in India?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 360-380.
    9. Francine D. Blau & Anne E. Winkler, 2017. "Women, Work, and Family," NBER Working Papers 23644, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Iris Delgado & Baltica Cabieses & Mauricio Apablaza & Carla Castillo & Ximena Aguilera & Isabel Matute & Manuel Najera & Juan M Pericàs & Joan Benach, 2019. "Evaluation of the effectiveness and equity of the maternity protection reform in Chile from 2000 to 2015," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-16, September.
    11. Balafoutas, Loukas & Davis, Brent J. & Sutter, Matthias, 2016. "Affirmative action or just discrimination? A study on the endogenous emergence of quotas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 87-98.
    12. Cheikh T. Ndour & Simplice A. Asongu, 2025. "Fear to fail and entrepreneurship intent: examining linkages and potential pathways in Senegal," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 207-229, February.
    13. Costa-Font, Joan & Flèche, Sarah, 2020. "Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    14. García, Raffi E. & López Rago, Ricardo A., 2025. "Financial subsidies, female employment, and plant performance — Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    15. Paula Rodríguez-Modroño & Mauricio Matus López & Lina Gálvez-Muñoz, 2016. "Female labor force participation, inequality and household well-being in the Second Globalization. The Spanish case," Working Papers 16.02, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History.
    16. Hare, Denise, 2016. "What accounts for the decline in labor force participation among married women in urban China, 1991–2011?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 251-266.
    17. Angela Carollo & Kaare Christensen & Anna Oksuzyan & Sven Drefahl & Alyson van Raalte & Carlo Giovanni Camarda & Linda Juel Ahrenfeldt, 2019. "Is the age difference between partners related to women's earnings?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(15), pages 425-460.
    18. Grigoli, Francesco & Koczan, Zsoka & Topalova, Petia, 2020. "Automation and labor force participation in advanced economies: Macro and micro evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    19. Michael Callaghan & Jamie Culling & Finn Robinson, 2018. "Ageing is a drag: Projecting labour force participation in New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Analytical Notes series AN2018/10, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    20. Stefania Albanesi, 2023. "The Outlook for Women's Employment and Labor Force Participation," NBER Working Papers 31916, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    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:ehl:lserod:123208. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.