The Role of Gender in Employment Polarization; Michelle Rendall (Monash University)

Abstract

We document that U.S. employment polarization in the 1980-2017 period is largely generated by women. In addition, we provide evidence that the increase of employment shares at the bottom of the skill distribution are generated in market sectors producing services representing home production substitutes. We then show that a canonical model of skill-biased technological change augmented with a gender dimension, an endogenous market/home labor choice and a two-sector market environment accounts well for gender, sectoral and overall employment polarization. Counterfactual experiments suggest that without the large increase in the skill premium of high-skilled women, employment polarization would have been substantially reduced, and changes of employment shares at the bottom of the distribution would have been negative

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