Umaña-Aponte, Marcela and Bhalotra, Sonia R (2012) Women's Labour Supply and Household Insurance in Africa. [UNSPECIFIED]

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This paper investigates whether cyclical variation in women´s labour supply in Africa contributes to smoothing household consumption. We find little support for this hypothesis. Using comparable individual data on about 0.5 million women in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries merged with country level panel data on GDP during 1987-2006, we find that the within-country relationship of women´s employment and income is, on average, positive. This finding is robust to controls for country-specific trends and potentially correlated shocks. Examination of business cycle variation in the distribution of women´s employment across sectors suggests that recessions are associated with increases in unemployment and self-employment relative to paid employment. The results have potentially important implications for understanding coping mechanisms, labour markets, fertility timing, and investments in children.

Item Type:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Business cycles, Insurance, Labor supply, Women
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics, Department of
Depositing User:	Jim Jamieson
Date Deposited:	14 Nov 2014 11:52
Last Modified:	08 Jul 2019 21:17
URI:	http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/11607

Actions (login required)

View Item