The chapter examines how the various dimensions of economic inequality between men and women are analyzed today. Beyond the gender wage gap—a central issue—and of course the still far from equal sharing of housework, the chapter also reviews research on gender inequality in access to...

Using data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in the United States, we study the role of religious affiliation and participation in the labor supply behavior of non-Hispanic married women with young children. We estimate ordered probit models with a trichotomous...

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we explore the causal effect of gender-identity norms on female teenagers' engagement in risky behaviors relative to boys in the US. To do so, we exploit idiosyncratic variation across adjacent grades within schools in the...

This paper explores a novel mechanism of gender identity formation. Specifically, we explore how the work behavior of a teenager's own mother, as well as that of her friends' mothers, affect her work decisions in adulthood. The first mechanism is commonly included in economic models. The second,...

This study analyses whether the role of religion for employment of married women in Europe has changed over time and along women's life cycles. Using information on 44'000 married European women from the World Values Survey 1981-2013, we find that in OECD-Europe there is little difference among...

Using individual-level data from the National Family Research of Japan Survey (1999, 2004 and 2009) and exploiting variation in the share of individuals with non-traditional gender norms across birth-cohorts, survey year, education, and prefecture, we find that an increase in the share of...

This chapter surveys recent literature on the drivers of mothers labour supply in OECD countries. We present a number of facts on the variations across time and across countries of family composition and mothers employment. We aim to answer key questions on their decision to return to work after...

Reforms that reduce alimony can affect married couples in two different ways. First, reduced alimony lowers the bargaining power of the payee, usually the wife. Second, reduced alimony lowers the incentives of wives to engage in the traditional male breadwinner model of household specialization....

We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...

We document contemporaneous differences in the aggregate labor supply of married couples across 17 European countries and the US. Based on a model of joint household decision making, we quantify the contribution of international differences in non-linear labor income taxes and consumption taxes...