Are Business Cycles Gender Neutral?

Giovanni Razzu () and Carl Singleton

No em-dp2013-07, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: We study the relationship between business cycles and gender employment rate gaps in the UK over the last four decades, on which there is surprisingly limited evidence. An analysis of employment rates as opposed to unemployment accounts for the greater tendency of women to move in and out of economic activity between spells of work. We estimate the relationship using a multivariate GARCH model and show results by using both the Christiano Fitzgerald Bass Pand filter and the Hodrick Prescott filter to extract the cyclical components of GDP. We find that business cycles are not gender neutral, their impact being greater on male than on female employment rates. A one percentage point increase in the deviation from trend GDP determines an increase in the gender employment rate gap of 0.2-0.25 percentage points.

Keywords: business cycles; gender; employment; multivariate GARCH models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E32 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2013-11-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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