Saturday, 27 March 2010: 10:00
Objectives
This paper aims at explaining, from a theoretical point of view, why European countries with the highest proportion of females in employment, relative to men, show the highest fraction of time devoted to social participation and education attainment, while the lowest proportion of time devoted to work. In particular, we will focus on developed countries belonging to the European Union.
The model
We propose a model of growth with human capital accumulation, in which individuals allocate their time among work, education and socio-political participation. Following Lucas (1988), human capital accumulation depends on the level of human capital already attained by the representative agent, time devoted to education and the productivity of the education sector. Differently from Lucas, we assume that human capital depreciates at the same rate of depreciation of physical capital.
In our economy there are two social groups, specifically women and men, whose values and targets are different; every individual engages in socio-political activities to socially establish the values of the group she/he belongs to. Socio-political activities allow agents to take part in the determination of the values of the society and affect individual’s utility depending on the relative presence of the individual’s social group in the economy (specifically, in production).
We solve for the steady state of the economy and the Nash-Cournot equilibrium between the two groups and study how time allocation changes as the relative presence of women and men in the economy becomes more balanced. The model predicts that the highest individual involvement in socio-political activities by both groups can be achieved (in steady-state) if social groups are equally present in the economy; as the relative importance of any group exceeds the egalitarian distribution, time allocated to socio-political participation decreases.
Results
Our framework predicts that a society characterised by a more equal gender involvement in economic activity can achieve a redistribution of hours of work from men to women such that people, on average, are able to reallocate their time in favour of other activities, such as education and socio-political participation.
We simulate the model on some European countries with different female/male employment rates, growth rates of population and capital shares. Simulations confirm the empirical evidence: European countries with a more equal presence of women and men in the labour market experience higher education attainment rates, allocate a higher proportion of time to social participation, and work, on average, a lower number of hours than countries with a lower proportion of females in the labour force.
This paper aims at explaining, from a theoretical point of view, why European countries with the highest proportion of females in employment, relative to men, show the highest fraction of time devoted to social participation and education attainment, while the lowest proportion of time devoted to work. In particular, we will focus on developed countries belonging to the European Union.
The model
We propose a model of growth with human capital accumulation, in which individuals allocate their time among work, education and socio-political participation. Following Lucas (1988), human capital accumulation depends on the level of human capital already attained by the representative agent, time devoted to education and the productivity of the education sector. Differently from Lucas, we assume that human capital depreciates at the same rate of depreciation of physical capital.
In our economy there are two social groups, specifically women and men, whose values and targets are different; every individual engages in socio-political activities to socially establish the values of the group she/he belongs to. Socio-political activities allow agents to take part in the determination of the values of the society and affect individual’s utility depending on the relative presence of the individual’s social group in the economy (specifically, in production).
We solve for the steady state of the economy and the Nash-Cournot equilibrium between the two groups and study how time allocation changes as the relative presence of women and men in the economy becomes more balanced. The model predicts that the highest individual involvement in socio-political activities by both groups can be achieved (in steady-state) if social groups are equally present in the economy; as the relative importance of any group exceeds the egalitarian distribution, time allocated to socio-political participation decreases.
Results
Our framework predicts that a society characterised by a more equal gender involvement in economic activity can achieve a redistribution of hours of work from men to women such that people, on average, are able to reallocate their time in favour of other activities, such as education and socio-political participation.
We simulate the model on some European countries with different female/male employment rates, growth rates of population and capital shares. Simulations confirm the empirical evidence: European countries with a more equal presence of women and men in the labour market experience higher education attainment rates, allocate a higher proportion of time to social participation, and work, on average, a lower number of hours than countries with a lower proportion of females in the labour force.