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  5. Gender Identity, Expectations, and Labor Market Outcomes
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Gender Identity, Expectations, and Labor Market Outcomes

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)

Hosted By: Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics
  • Chair: Gahye Jeon, Georgia State University

Is Female Competitiveness in the Labor and Marriage Markets Influenced by Gender Identity?

Gahye Jeon
,
Georgia State University
David Ong
,
Jinan University

Abstract

Women have been robustly found to be less competitive than men in the West. This lower competitiveness has been used as a potential explanation for the gender gap in salaries. However, women's competitiveness may not be expressed only in their own labor market performance. Rather, it could also be expressed in the labor market performance of their spouse. We surveyed top graduate business students in China for their gender identity (GI) and subjective expectations about their own and future spouses' salary, work hours, and fertility. We use an all-pay auction experiment to derive a measure of competitiveness from the revealed psychological value of winning. Whereas men’s expectation of their own salary, but not their expected spouse’s increases on their own competitiveness, women’s expectation of their spouse’s salary, but not their own, increases on their own competitiveness. Women’s GI interacts with their competitiveness; competitive women with stronger GI have even higher spousal salary expectations. Women’s own work hours decrease on expected fertility only when they have strong GI. Our results suggest women’s labor and marriage market competitiveness may be influenced by their GI.

Marriage, Children, and Labor Supply: Beliefs and Outcomes

Yifan Gong
,
University of Western Ontario
Todd Stinebrickner
,
University of Western Ontario
Ralph Stinebrickner
,
Berea College

Abstract

Abstract:
While a large literature is interested in the relationship between family and labor supply outcomes, little is known about the expectations of these objects at earlier stages. We examine these expectations, taking advantage of unique data from the Berea Panel Study. In addition to characterizing expectations, starting during college, the data details outcomes for ten years after graduation. Methodological contributions come from approaches to validate quality of survey expectations data and the recognition that expectations data, along with longitudinal data, can potentially help address endogeneity issues arising in the estimation of the causal effect of family on labor supply.

Biased Wage Expectations and Female Labor Supply

Boryana Ilieva
,
Humboldt University of Berlin
Philipp Eisenhauer
,
University of Bonn
Peter Haan
,
German Institute for Economic Research (DIW)
Annekatrin Schrenker
,
German Institute for Economic Research (DIW)
Georg Weizsäcker
,
Humboldt University of Berlin

Abstract

We analyze how biased beliefs about future wages affect individual decisions in a dynamic setting. Specifically, we quantify the effects of biased expectations regarding wage growth and human capital accumulation in part-time and full-time employment on female labor market outcomes. Based on customized elicitation of expectation data, we document that both full-time employees and part-time employees have expectations about wage growth in part-time employment that are severely upward biased: employees do not realize that wage growth occurs almost exclusively in full time. However, empirically, wage growth rates in part-time work are close to zero, as we show both with reduced form estimations using a control function approach and a structural life-cycle model. We leverage the structural life cycle model to quantify how biased beliefs drive labor supply choices and wage profiles over the life cycle and to conduct policy simulations. We first simulate the employment, and welfare effect of information treatments which de-bias individuals. Second we assess the implications of increasing the incentives to work full-time despite the positively biased expectations about the returns to part time employment. Our results show that biased beliefs considerably increase part-time employment and induces flatter long-run wage profiles. We find the strongest effects for women with college education which is consistent with the large difference between expected and realized wage profiles for this group.

Information and Social Norms: Experimental Evidence on the Labor Market Aspirations of Saudi Women

Ina Ganguli
,
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Basit Zafar
,
Arizona State University
Monira Essa Aloud
,
King Saud University
Sara Al-Rashood
,
King Saud University

Abstract

How important are social constraints and information gaps in explaining the low rates of female labor force participation (FLFP) in conservative societies that are undergoing social change? To answer this question, we conducted a field experiment embedded in a survey of female university students at a large public university in Saudi Arabia. We randomly provided one subset of individuals with information on the labor market and aspirations of their female peers (T1), while another subset was provided with this information along with a prime that made the role of parents and family more salient (T2). We find that expectations of working among those in the Control group are quite high, yet students underestimate the expected labor force attachment of their female peers. We show that information matters: relative to the Control group, expectations about own labor force participation are significantly higher in the T1 group. We find little evidence that dissemination of information is counteracted by local gender norms: impacts for the T2 group are significant and often larger than those for T1 group. However, T2 leads to higher expectations of working in Education - a sector that is socially more acceptable for women.
Discussant(s)
Ernesto Reuben
,
New York University-Abu Dhabi
Brenden Timpe
,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Christopher Taber
,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Rebecca Dizon-Ross
,
University of Chicago
JEL Classifications
  • J1 - Demographic Economics
  • D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty