COVID-19 She-Cession: The Employment Penalty of Taking Care of Young Children

Stefania Fabrizio and Marina Tavares
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Diego Braz Pereira Gomes

No 2021/058, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain the virus have caused severe disruptions to labor supply and demand worldwide. Understanding who is bearing the burden of the crisis and what drives it is crucial for designing policies going forward. Using the U.S. monthly Current Population Survey data, this paper analyzes differences in employment responses between men and women. The main finding is that less educated women with young children were the most adversely affected during the first nine months of the crisis.The loss of employment of women with young children due to the burden of additional childcare is estimated to account for 45 percent of the increase in the employment gender gap, and to reduce total output by 0.36 percent between April and November 2020.

Keywords: COVID-19; Gender Equality; School Closures; Output Cost; WP; employment gender gap; employment loss; gender employment gap; women employment distribution; employment level; gender employment growth gap; occupations employment; Employment; employment trajectory; employment penalty; employment fluctuation; change series; gender gap increase; Women; Unemployment; Gender inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2021-03-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=50117 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/058

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().