Fueling the gender gap? Oil and women's labor and marriage market outcomes

Stephan Maurer and Andrei Potlogea ()

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

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a county-level panel derived from US Census data for 1900-1940, we specifically test the hypothesis that the presence of mineral resources can induce changes in the sectoral composition of the local economy that are detrimental to women's labor market outcomes. We find evidence that the discovery of oil at the county level may constitute a substantial male biased demand shock to local labor markets, as it is associated with a higher gender pay gap. However, we find no evidence that oil wealth lowers female labor force participation or has any impact on local marriage and fertility patterns. While our results are consistent with oil shocks limiting female labor market opportunities in some sectors (mainly manufacturing), this effect tends to be compensated by the higher availability of service sector jobs for women who are therefore not driven out of the labor market.

Keywords: Oil; structural transformation; female labor force; participation; gender pay gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 N5 O1 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2014-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60351/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fueling the Gender Gap? Oil and Women's Labor and Marriage Market Outcomes (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:60351

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