The role of gender in employment polarization

Fabio Cerina, Alessio Moro and Michelle Rendall

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We document that employment polarization in the 1980-2008 period in the U.S. is largely generated by women. For the latter, employment shares increase both at the bottom and at the top of the skill distribution, generating the typical U-shape polarization graph, while for men employment shares decrease in a similar fashion along the whole skill distribution. We show that a canonical model of skill-biased technological change augmented with a gender dimension, an endogenous market/home labor choice and a multi-sector environment accounts well for gender and overall employment polarization. The model also accounts for the absence of employment polarization during the 1960-1980 period, which is due to the flat behavior of changes in women’s employment shares along the skill distribution, and can reproduce the different evolution of employment shares across decades during the 1980-2008 period. The faster growth of skill-biased technological change since the 1980s accounts for a substantial part of the employment polarization generated by the model.

Keywords: Job Polarization; Gender; Skill-biased technological change; Home Production. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E20 E21 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gen and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86170/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: THE ROLE OF GENDER IN EMPLOYMENT POLARIZATION (2021)
Working Paper: The Role of Gender in Employment Polarization (2020)
Working Paper: The Role of Gender in Employment Polarization (2017)
Working Paper: The role of gender in employment polarization (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:86170

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