Important progress toward gender equality has been made in the past decades, but inequalities linked to gender norms, stereotypes, and the unequal distribution of housework and childcare responsibilities persist.
... See More + Lifetime events such as marriage and parenthood bring substantial changes in time use among women and men. This paper updates and reinforces the findings of previous studies by analyzing gender differences in the allocation of time among market work and unpaid domestic work. Results from the analysis of time use patterns in 19 countries of different income levels and from various regions suggest that women specialize in unpaid domestic and care work and men specialize in market work. The paper employs propensity score matching to assess the marriage and parenthood "penalty" on time use patterns over the lifecycle. The findings indicate that women of prime working age are the most penalized on a host of measures, including labor market participation, unpaid domestic work, and leisure time. Men are not necessarily penalized for, and sometimes benefit from, marriage or parenthood.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8981 AUG 14, 2019
Moldova has made significant progress in economic growth and poverty reduction since 2000, but the growth model has mainly relied on remittances, with limited job creation (World Bank, 2016a; Merroto et al., 2016).
... See More + To sustain this progress and to catch up with the living standards of other countries in the region, Moldova requires a new growth model which is driven by higher private sector growth and creation of more and better jobs. World Bank (2017a) specifies three main policy areas to support Moldova’s transition towards a new model: (i) economic governance, strengthening the rule of law and accountability in economic institutions, (ii) service governance, improving efficiency, quality and inclusive access to public services, and (iii) skills development, enhancing the quality and relevance of education and training to enable the acquisition of job-related skills. The Moldova’s Government recognizes in its strategic documents (for example, Moldova 2020 National Development Strategy) that aligning skills supply with demand is crucial to expand job opportunities and to boost productivity and innovation. But to develop the necessary job-related skills in the education and training system, it is important to understand which skills are required by Moldovan employers. This report provides the complementary analysis of skills demand in Moldova gleaned from two sources of vacancies, vacancies shared by employers with the ANOFM and vacancies scraped from two major online job portals. The main objective of this report is to fill the observed knowledge gap about employers’ demand for formal qualifications and skills based on the analysis of requirements specified in job vacancy postings. Another objective is to compare which vacancies get to the ANOFM and to private portals in order to understand the reach of the ANOFM relative to the overall labor and skills demand and to offer policy recommendations.
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Individual-level employment data have a wide range of applications. They are used to monitor labor markets and the Sustainable Development Goals, contribute to understanding and explaining socioeconomic conditions, and may help to design and inform labor market policies.
... See More + This paper is relevant for academics and policy makers who want to understand the main survey design issues behind the collection of individual-level employment data in nationally representative household surveys and the implications for data quality, particularly for women and young people. The paper reviews four survey programs (Living Standards Measurement Study, Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture, Labor Force Surveys, and Demographic and Health Surveys) in 14 developing countries. First, the paper reviews the Sustainable Development Goals to identify a core set of labor market indicators and briefly discusses the International Labour Organization's definitions of key concepts that shape these indicators. Second, it assesses whether the Sustainable Development Goals labor market indicators are captured in the reviewed surveys. Third, it takes stock of current approaches to collect employment data and discusses critical survey design features, such as the structure of the labor module and the wording of the questions. Fourth, the paper examines whether these survey design features are gender and age neutral. Data from the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture are used to illustrate these issues. The paper concludes by proposing short- and medium-term objectives to improve the data quality in the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8882 JUN 11, 2019
Promoting women-run enterprises is increasingly being recognized as one of the important interventions to advance women’s economic empowerment.
... See More + Women-run enterprises put women in the center of the market; which is a traditionally a male domain. However, for women to be able to run strong, viable and sustainable enterprises, policy support, credit access, training and market linkage are required. The Kudumbashree project demonstrates what it takes to promote, and take to scale, women’s enterprises.
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Using an event-study framework, this paper examines the impact of four minimum wage hikes between 2008 and 2015 on the Cambodian labor market. The analysis finds that, except for immediate adjustments around the time of the hikes, the minimum wage hikes did not affect participation rates in the affected sector -- garments and footwear -- or the unaffected sectors.
... See More + However, the minimum wage hikes increased wages modestly (3 percent) for workers in the affected sectors and modestly decreased wages (1.5 percent) for workers in the unaffected sectors. The gains for the affected sectors are slightly larger at higher quantiles than at lower quantiles. This is suggestive of a change in compensation structure within the affected firms as a result of the hikes.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8839 MAY 02, 2019
Rural economies are in transition around the world; in many countries, improved technology and linkages across sectors have expanded access to markets and accelerated production for some farmers.
... See More + At the same time, rural areas globally are facing a growing base of landless and smallholder farmers, out-migration to urban areas, and persistence of low-skilled, informal, and seasonal jobs where women are often heavily concentrated. Recent global initiatives are examining programs that can effectively raise rural incomes, including how addressing shortfalls in wome's hours worked and earnings can raise rural productivity and growth. But well-designed policies to address these issues require improved counting of individuals' employment, accounting for the complexity of measuring rural women's labor force participation, as well as data on social, economic, and institutional constraints that women face in seeking better economic opportunities. Using recent rounds of the Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda Living Standards and Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture, as well as findings from recent country pilots conducted by the International Labour Organization, this paper discusses best practices and issues to consider when examining rural women's employment in socioeconomic surveys, as well as a survey research agenda to improve measurement.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8840 MAY 02, 2019
