Gender gaps and the rise of the service economy
This paper investigates the role of the rise in services in the narrowing of gender gaps in hours and wages in recent decades. We highlight the between-industry component of differential gender trends for the United States and propose a model economy with goods, services, and home production, in which women have a comparative advantage in producing services. The rise of services, driven by structural transformation and marketization of home production, raises women's relative wages and market hours. Quantitatively, the model accounts for an important share of the observed trends in women's hours and relative wages.
L. Rachel Ngai and Barbara Petrongolo
1 October 2017
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9(4) , pp.1-44, 2017
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20150253
This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour markets programme.
This publication comes under the following theme: Gender in the labour market