 The contribution of Women's Employment and Earnings to Household Income Inequality: A Cross-Country AnalysisSusan Harkness () No 531, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Abstract: Aggregate data shows an inverse relationship between female employment and income inequality. This paper investigates this relationship using micro-data for seventeen OECD countries. In all countries, female earnings exert an equalising force on the distribution of income in spite of large employment gaps between high and low educated women. There are marked similarities across countries; even in Nordic countries where employment rates are high female earnings comprise a small proportion of the family budget and single women, employed or not, are overrepresented in the bottom of the income distribution. The US is the one country that stands out, with greater earnings equality among couples and more single women households making it into the top quintile. For all countries, raising female employment and reducing employment inequality between women would have a substantial impact on reducing household income inequality, and a far larger impact than reducing the gender pay gap. Keywords: Income inequality; female employment; gender pay gap (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:531 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.