Engendering globalization: Household structures, female labor supply and economic growth

This dissertation is constituted by three distinctive chapters or essays, but the unifying theme is how a more careful consideration of female labor supply may better inform assessments of economic growth and structural change. In chapter I, I use the insights of both cooperative and noncooperative bargaining theory to develop a household model of female labor supply. Particular attention is given to how this model applies to the developing world, including how the effects of larger social shifts such as technological change and fertility decline are mediated by bargaining and inequality in the family. In chapter II, I develop a theoretical foundation for analyzing how gender roles in the household affect foreign direct investment in a developing country context. It is argued that the extent to which women and men share the costs of social reproduction at the household level is a central determinant of female labor supply and the profitability of investment. I combine a model of family structure with a structuralist macromodel to investigate the effects of various public policies on women's wages and employment. A major goal is to specify the constraints imposed by international capital mobility on the prospects for increased equality and living standards for women. In chapter III, I reevaluate economic growth in Taiwan between 1965 and 1995 by developing an alternative measure of economic production that accounts for both market and nonmarket production in the form of domestic services provided by women in the home. I find that social services, a category that includes social services provided in the market and the home, is the lead employer of Taiwanese labor between 1965 and 1995. Another key finding is that many of the factors driving growth in the market sector also shape growth in the nonmarket sector. Despite trend declines in the relative size of the nonmarket domestic sector, it has probably continued to grow throughout this period, primarily because of productivity gains in household production and the effects of demographic change.