The Effect of Housework on Wages: A Study of Migrants and Native-Born Individuals in Germany
- PDF / 696,278 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 113 Downloads / 189 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Effect of Housework on Wages: A Study of Migrants and NativeBorn Individuals in Germany Tanja Fendel1 Accepted: 24 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract To increase labour market participation among migrants, an increase in female labour market participation is important, with wages being a significant incentive. In research on the gender wage gap, the consideration of housework has been a milestone. Gender differences in housework time have always been much greater among migrants than among native-born individuals. Based on data obtained from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1995 to 2017, this study questioned whether housework affects the wages of migrant full-time workers differently than those of their native-born counterparts. To consider the possible endogeneity of housework in the wage equation, the analysis estimated, in addition to an OLS model, a hybrid model to estimate within effects. Significant negative effects of housework on wages resulted for migrant women and native-born individuals. The effects for migrant men were significantly smaller or insignificant, which could not be explained by threshold effects. The greater amount of time spent on housework by migrant women than by native-born women will in general lead to a larger wage decrease due to housework for migrant women than for native-born women. The results further showed that the observed variables explained very little of the migrants’ gender wage gap, in contrast to the gap of native-born individuals. Human capital returns, including education and work experiences, were much lower for migrant women than for native-born women, whereas differences in housework equally contributed to the explained share of the gap for both groups, indicating the greater relevance of housework for migrants’ wage gap. Keywords Household production · Wages · Female migrant labour market integration JEL Classification D13 · J16 · F22
Introduction Immigrants are an integral part of most industrial countries’ societies, while they have usually much greater problems of labour market integration than natives. This debate has often focused on men, but greater attention to women is highly relevant. Apart from gender differences in employment rates, large gender wage gaps have contributed to problems for female migrants’ labour market integration and decreased their incentives to participate. Data from the German SocioEconomic Panel (GSOEP) from 2017 showed that, among full-time workers living in couple households, the gross hourly wage gap was 14% among migrants (and 19% among * Tanja Fendel [email protected] 1
Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Regensburger Str. 104, D‑90478 Nuremberg, Germany
native-born individuals), and the unconditional gross hourly wage gap was 23% among migrants (and 16% among nativeborn individuals). Economists have traditionally explained structural gender inequality in earnings based on differences in human capital variables, occupations, industries and firms or based on discrimination. Modern ap
Data Loading...
