Cross-Country Evidence on the Relationship between Overwork and Skilled Women's Job Choices

Patricia Cortés; Jessica Pan

doi:10.1257/aer.p20171064

Cross-Country Evidence on the Relationship between Overwork and Skilled Women's Job Choices

¹ Questrom School of Business, Boston University, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 (e-mail: ) · ² National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore 117570 (e-mail: )

American Economic Review 2017 open access

This paper examines the relationship between the prevalence of overwork and skilled women's labor force participation and occupational choice. Using country-level variation, we find a negative relationship between the share of males working 50+ hours a week and the LFP of young married women, with the correlation being much smaller for single women and older married women. Using a panel of occupations across countries, we find that overwork in an occupation is negatively correlated with the share of married women working in that occupation. This finding is robust to controlling for the occupational distribution of groups with fewer household responsibilities.

DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171064
Volume: 107 (5)
Pages: 105-109
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
Sources: openalex crossref