Can Children's Education Enhance Formal Female Labor Force Participation?

Gustavo J. Canavire Bacarreza () and Gunnar Poppe Yanez
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Gustavo J. Canavire Bacarreza: World Bank
Gunnar Poppe Yanez: Johns Hopkins University
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Gustavo Javier Canavire-Bacarreza

No 17429, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Developing countries face significant challenges in increasing women's labor force participation and improving job quality, partly due to the substantial presence of the informal sector. This paper examines the case of Bolivia, which has the highest level of informality in Latin America. We empirically investigate whether the expansion of children's access to education in Bolivia provides an additional explanation for the reduction in female participation in the informal sector, as children attending school would require less parental supervision. Using a structural model in which mothers decide to participate in formal markets at a cost inversely related to the likelihood of their children being enrolled in school, we find that the rise in primary school enrollment in Bolivia explains up to 40% of the decline in female workers under age 40 in informal markets. Our findings contribute to the growing body of evidence on the positive impact of children's access to education on women's labor market outcomes in developing countries.

Keywords: Bolivia; female labor force participation; structural estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 D13 J12 J13 J16 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-iue, nep-lab, nep-lam, nep-mac and nep-ure
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