Are Social Norms Associated with Married Women’s Labor Force Participation? A Comparison of Japan and the United States
Are Social Norms Associated with Married Women’s Labor Force Participation? A Comparison of Japan and the United States
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社会规范与已婚女性劳动力参与率相关吗？日本和美国的比较
DOI：
10.1007/s10834-021-09815-y
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
F.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Li;W.;Urakawa;K. and Suga;F.
尽管世界范围内妇女的社会经济地位有所改善，有几个因素缩小了劳动参与率和收入平等方面的性别差异，但性别差距仍然很大。这项研究的目标是确定性别差距与社会规范之间的关系。具体地说，在性别角色的背景下，我们考察了妻子不应该比丈夫赚得更多的社会规范。我们通过应用一种估计程序来估计一个模型，该模型用妻子收入超过丈夫的概率来解释妻子的劳动力参与，该估计程序解释了自我选择就业所产生的潜在偏差。由于社会规范的影响在不同的文化背景下可能会有所不同，我们使用从日本和美国进行的调查获得的数据集来比较估计结果-分别代表东方和西方文化。我们的结果表明，在日本，妻子收入高于丈夫的概率增加10个百分点，与其劳动力参与率下降8个百分点相关，而当使用美国数据估计该模型时，妻子收入更高的可能性并不显著。因此，在日本，妻子的劳动参与决策可以比在美国更紧密地与社会规范联系在一起，反映了这些国家妇女的不同社会地位。
Although the social-economic status of women has improved worldwide, with several factors reducing gender differences in labor participation and income equality, a substantial gender gap persists. The goal of this study is to determine how the gender gap is associated with social norms. Specifically, within the context of gender roles, we examine the social norm that wives should not earn more than their husbands. We estimate a model that explains wives’ labor force participation in terms of the probability of wives earning more than their husbands by applying an estimation procedure that accounts for potential bias arising from self-selection into employment. Since the impact of social norms can vary in different cultural contexts, we compare the estimation results using datasets obtained from surveys conducted in Japan and the US—representing Eastern and Western cultures, respectively. Our results indicate that a 10 percentage point increase in the probability of wives earning more than their husbands is associated with an 8 percentage point decrease in their labor force participation rate in Japan, whereas the probability of wives earning more is not significant when the model is estimated using U.S. data. Thus, wives’ labor force participation decisions can be related to the social norm more closely in Japan than in the US, reflecting the different social status of women in these countries.