The role of gender in employment polarization

Fabio Cerina, Alessio Moro and Michelle Rendall

No 250, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We document that U.S. employment polarization in the 1980-2008 period is largely generated by women. Female employment shares increase both at the bottom and at the top of the skill distribution, generating the typical U-shape polarization graph, while male employment shares decrease in a more similar fashion along the whole skill distribution. We show that a canonical model of skill-biased technological change augmented with a gender dimension, an endogenous market/home labor choice and a multi-sector environment accounts well for gender and overall employment polarization. The model also accounts for the absence of employment polarization during the 1960- 1980 period and broadly reproduces the different evolution of employment shares across decades during the 1980-2008 period. The faster growth of skill-biased technological change since the 1980s accounts for most of the employment polarization generated by the model.

Keywords: Job polarization; gender; skill-biased technological change; home production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E20 E21 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/136668/1/econwp250.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: THE ROLE OF GENDER IN EMPLOYMENT POLARIZATION (2021)
Working Paper: The Role of Gender in Employment Polarization (2020)
Working Paper: The Role of Gender in Employment Polarization (2017)
Working Paper: The role of gender in employment polarization (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:250

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