The Welfare State and Gender Equality

Francois Nielsen, David Bradley, John D. Stephens (), Evelyne Huber () and Stephanie Moller ()

No 279, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: This paper examines the determinants of several indicators of economic well being of women. The feminist literature has suggested that womens well being is best measured through both the economic status of women and power relations vis-à-vis men. Barbara Hobson has proposed that the percentage of single mothers in poverty and married womens income as a proportion of both spouses income effectively measure economic status and power relations. The dependent variables are calculated from micro data available in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive, which now contains enough countries and time points to allow multivariate statistical analysis with a sufficiently large number of independent variables to test a broad range of hypotheses on the determinants of gender egalitarian outcomes while controlling for other possible determinants. In the case of poverty among single mothers, the LIS data also allow us to go beyond Hobsons single indicator to investigate the extent to which government action is responsible for poverty reduction. Hence, we analyze 4 dependent variables: 1) pre tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, 2) reductions in single mothers poverty due to taxes and transfers, 3) post tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, and 4) womens wages relative to spouses wages. In these analyses, we test feminist theories along with theories of economic structure, labor market institutions, state structure and political power.

Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2001-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:279

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