75 research outputs found
The persisting pay gap and the motherhood penalty
Despite progress in gender equality, the pay gap continues to be a major challenge. Policymakers are yet to understand the nuances and intricate mechanics of why women’s earnings take a hit after they become mothers, argues Almudena Sevilla
New approaches to economics research are reshaping how we understand and respond to gender stereotypes
New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Policy at LSE, discussed cutting-edge research on discrimination and gender stereotypes in the field of economics. Conference organiser Almudena Sevilla speaks to Myung Jin about researching the impact of gender stereotypes and how this field is evolving
Social norms and household time allocation
Economic theories of the household predict that increases in female relative human capital lead to decreases in female housework time. However, longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence seems to contradict this implication. Women's share of home time fails to decrease despite increases in women's relative earnings. The literature has proposed social norms on the household division of labor as an alternative explanation. We use the 2002-2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS) to explore the presence of social norms associated with the household division of housework and childcare. First, we observe that wives who earn more than their husbands still do more than 50% of the housework and childcare. Second, we find that a woman's relative share of housework decreases as her relative earnings increase, but only up to the point where she earns the same as her husband. Finally, independently of the definition of childcare, the relative time devoted to childcare does not vary with spouses' relative earnings. All these findings suggest that social norms may be an important factor in the division of household time.Household production; intrahousehold allocation; time allocation; social norms;
Consumption, retirement and life-cycle prices: Evidence from Spain
Evidence from several countries reveals a substantial drop in household consumption around retirement age that some researchers believe is difficult to reconcile with standard life-cycle models. Using detailed expenditure data from a Spanish panel survey, we find no evidence of a consumption-retirement puzzle in Spain for the period of 1985–2004. However, we find a drop in food expenditure at home from 1998 to 2004 and evidence on households paying lower prices for the food they purchase after retirement in this latter period. Our findings are consistent with a household model that allows for home production whereby retirees substitute away from market goods to home production, as long as one accounts for the greater participation in housework by men after retirement coinciding with the latter period of the survey.
Does Culture Affect Divorce Decisions? Evidence from European Immigrants in the US
This paper explores the role of culture in determining divorce decisions by examining country of origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of US laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home country variables including average church attendance and GDP. Moreover, specifications with country of origin fixed effects suggest that divorce probabilities are especially low for immigrants from countries with low divorce rates that reside amidst a large number of co-ethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.immigrants, culture, divorce
What girls study at school affects how healthy their babies will be later in life
Education plays a crucial role in shaping the future of individuals and societies. Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz, Cristina Borra and Almudena Sevilla present findings from research on the long-term health effects of a comprehensive educational reform in Spain that integrated a more general curriculum into the high school system. They find girls who followed a broader educational curriculum until the age of 16 were more likely to have healthier children later in life than those who were divided into vocational or academic tracks at the age of 14
The “child penalty” creates most of the gender earnings gaps in rich countries
After having children, women tend to change their working hours and wage rates, and even transition to new jobs. This phenomenon, known as the child penalty, explains the bulk of the gender earnings gap in developed countries. Myung Jin outlines key points raised by economists Camille Landais and Almudena Sevilla and Labour MP Anneliese Dodds during the “Women, work and economics” event hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance
The ability to eat cheaper home-cooked meals more often might explain why people appear to spend less money after retirement.
A number of studies suggest that those who have retired spend significantly less money than those who are still working. This might imply that many people have insufficient savings for retirement. Using data from Spain, Maria Jose Luengo-Prado and Almudena Sevilla-Sanz take issue with this perspective. Noting that much of the reduction in spending is related to food expenditure, they argue that in many cases reduced spending simply reflects the fact that those who are retired have more time to use home-produced goods
Gender stereotypes in the family
We study whether and why parents have gender-stereotyped beliefs when they assess their child’s skills. Exploiting systematic differences in parental beliefs about a child’s skills and blindly graded standardized test scores, we find that parents overestimate boys’ skills more so than girls’ in mathematics (a male-stereotyped subject), whereas there are no gender differences for reading. Consistent with an information friction hypothesis, we find that the parental gender bias disappears for parents who are interviewed after receiving information on their child’s test scores. We further show that the parental gender bias in detriment of girls contributes to explain the widening of the gender gap in mathematical skills later in childhood, supporting the hypothesis that exposure to gender biases negatively influence girls’ ability to achieve their full potential
Medidas educativas de refuerzo en lectoescritura: el caso del programa de Ayuda a la Dislexia en la Comunidad de Madrid
En este artículo evaluamos el programa de Ayuda a la Dislexia de la Comunidad de Madrid en el curso 2018-2019 dirigido a alumnos de primaria con dificultades lectoescritoras. El programa consiste en dos herramientas: a) una prueba para comprobar los alumnos que presentan dificul-tades de lectoescritura, y b) hasta 42.000 ejercicios en una plataforma digital para trabajar y re-forzar esas competencias. Un 7,55 % (n=1,022) de los alumnos presentaban dificultades lectoes-critoras. Los resultados del análisis muestran que no existe correlación entre la participación del centro en el programa y el rendimiento de los alumnos de esos colegios en las pruebas externas y estandarizadas de Matemáticas y Lengua, pero sí para el caso de Inglés. Al desglosar los resulta-dos por género, se observa una asociación fuerte y positiva del proyecto Ayuda a la Dislexia para las chicas en Lengua e Inglés (y, como se podría esperar, no tanto en Matemáticas), mientras quepara los chicos solo es significativa en Inglés. No obstante, se ha comprobado que los centrosque participan en esta intervención tenían mejores resultados que los centros no tratados y que sus alumnos provienen de un entorno socioeconómico más elevado. Las diferentes características delos colegios tratados podrían explicar su participación, que era voluntaria, en el programade Ayuda a la Dislexia. La línea de investigación futura plantea explotar a través de un análisis de diferencias en diferencias que ha habido una nueva convocatoria del programa en el curso 2021-2022, en la que se han incorporado nuevos centros educativos para analizar si existe causalida
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