Narrowing women’s time and income gaps: an assessment of the synergies between working time reduction and universal income schemes

André Cieplinski, Simone D'Alessandro, Chandni Dwarkasing and Pietro Guarnieri
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André Cieplinski: Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa
Simone D'Alessandro: Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa
Chandni Dwarkasing: Department of Economics, SOAS University of London
Pietro Guarnieri: Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa

No 250, Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

Abstract: The COVID-19 crisis re-opened a discussion on the gendered nature of time-poverty and income inequality. We compare two policy combinations that assess the synergies between working time reduction and two universal income schemes: basic income and care income programmes. While the former provides every individual with an equal monetary benefit, the latter ties monetary benefits to the amount of unpaid and care work performed by individuals. We assess the impact of these policy combinations applying Eurogreen, a macrosimulation model tailored to Italy. Results suggest that while working time reduction directly improves the distribution of unpaid work and alleviates time-poverty, its impact on income inequality is limited. By contrast, the universal income schemes promote a similar and significant reduction of income inequality but differ in terms of gender equality outcomes. When it comes to improvements in women’s employment, labour force participation and real wages, working time reduction in combination with basic income outperforms care income. Meanwhile, care income outperforms basic income in terms of women’s income gap. Finally, regarding time-use, the adverse labour market effects of a care income on women’s participation rates compromises the redistribution of unpaid work from women to men.

Keywords: inequality; time-use, unpaid work, care work, working time reduction, basic income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B54 C63 E24 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 192
Date: 2022-04, Revised 2022-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hme
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