Immigration, family responsibilities and the labor supply of skilled native women

Lidia Farre, Libertad Gonzalez and Francesc Ortega

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of Spain’s large recent immigration wave on the labor supply of highly skilled native women. We hypothesize that female immigration led to an increase in the supply of affordable household services, such as housekeeping and child or elderly care. As a result, i) native females with high earnings potential were able to increase their labor supply, and ii) the effects were larger on skilled women whose labor supply was heavily constrained by family responsibilities. Our evidence indicates that over the last decade immigration led to an important expansion in the size of the household services sector and to an increase in the labor supply of women in high-earning occupations (of about 2 hours per week). We also find that immigration allowed skilled native women to return to work sooner after childbirth, to stay in the workforce longer when having elderly dependents in the household, and to postpone retirement. Methodologically, we show that the availability of even limited Registry data makes it feasible to conduct the analysis using quarterly household survey data, as opposed to having to rely on the decennial Census.

Keywords: Immigration; Labor supply; Fertility; Retirement; Household services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1161.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women (2011)
Working Paper: Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women (2009)
Working Paper: Immigration, family responsibilities and the labor supply of skilled native women (2009)
Working Paper: Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1161

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).