On the Regional Labour Market Determinants of Female University Enrolment in Europe

Abstract

Casarico A., Profeta P. and Pronzato C. D. On the regional labour market determinants of female university enrolment in Europe, Regional Studies. This paper empirically investigates how young women's decisions of investing in post-secondary education are affected by labour market outcomes of older women living in the same region. EU-SILC data on educational decisions of women who completed secondary schooling are used and indicators of the regional labour market are constructed. Exploiting regional and time variability, it is found that the share of working women with young children, of women with managerial positions and the self-employed positively affect the probability to enrol. Significant effects of these variables for men are not found.

Casarico A., Profeta P. and Pronzato C. D. 欧洲女性就读大学的区域劳动市场决定因素，区域研究。本文就经验层面，探讨年轻女性投资高等教育的决定，如何受到居住于同一区域的年长女性的劳动市场结果所影响。本研究使用欧盟所得与生活条件统计（EU-SILC）中，完成中等教育的女性的教育决定数据，并建立区域劳动市场的指标。本研究利用区域及时间变异，发现养育幼儿的上班族女性、担任管理职位的女性、以及自僱者的比例，正向地影响就读高等教育的可能性。对男性而言，则未发现这些变因的显着影响。

Casarico A., Profeta P. et Pronzato C. D. Les déterminants sur le marché du travail régional du taux d'inscription universitaire des femmes en Europe, Regional Studies. Ce présent article analyse comment les décisions des jeunes femmes d'investir dans l’éducation post-secondaire sont influencées par la participation sur le marché du trvail des femmes plus âgées qui habitent la même région. On emploie les données EU-SILC sur les décisions relatives à l’éducation des femmes qui ont terminé les études secondaires et on construit des indices du marché du travail régional. En exploitant la variabilité régionale et temporelle, il s'avère que la part des femmes au travail ayant de jeunes enfants à charge, des femmes cadres et des travailleuses indépendantes influe de façon positive sur les intentions de s'inscrire. On ne trouve pas de tels effets significatifs pour les hommes.

Casarico A., Profeta P. und Pronzato C. D. Determinanten des regionalen Arbeitsmarkts für die Hochschulbildung von Frauen in Europa, Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird empirisch untersucht, wie die Entscheidungen von jungen Frauen zur Investition in eine weiterführende Bildung von der Arbeitsmarktsituation älterer Frauen in derselben Region beeinflusst wird. Auf der Grundlage von EU-SILC-Daten über die Bildungsentscheidungen von Frauen, die ihre sekundäre Schulbildung abgeschlossen haben, werden Indikatoren für den regionalen Arbeitsmarkt konstruiert. Bei Berücksichtigung der regionalen und zeitlichen Variabilität stellt sich heraus, dass sich der Anteil von berufstätigen Frauen mit jungen Kindern, von Frauen in Führungspositionen und von Freiberuflerinnen positiv auf die Wahrscheinlichkeit einer weiterführenden Bildung auswirkt. Für Männer werden keine signifikanten Auswirkungen dieser Variablen festgestellt.

Casarico A., Profeta P. y Pronzato C. D. Determinantes del mercado laboral regional para el acceso de las mujeres a la universidad en Europa, Regional Studies. Este trabajo empírico analiza las características del mercado laboral regional que determinan las decisiones de las mujeres jóvenes de invertir en educación post-secundaria, con particular enfoque en el papel de las oportunidades de trabajo para las madres y las oportunidades de promoción para las mujeres mayores. Utilizamos la base de datos EU-SILC para medir las decisiones de las mujeres que acabaron la escuela secundaria. Construimos indicadores del mercado de trabajo regional y consideramos la variabilidad regional y temporal para identificar cómo las decisiones de las mujeres de invertir in educación post-secundaria responden a los cambios en estas medidas. Nuestros resultados muestran que el porcentaje de mujeres trabajadoras con hijos pequeños, de mujeres con posiciones gerentes o trabajadoras autónomas afectan positivamente a la probabilidad de invertir en educación. No observamos ningún efecto significativo para los hombres.

• Post-secondary education
• Managerial positions
• Maternal employment
• EU-SILC data
• Repeated cross-section

• 高等教育
• 管理职位
• 母亲就业
• 欧盟所得与生活条件统计
• 重复横断

• Éducation post-secondaire
• Femme cadre
• Emploi maternel
• Données EU-SILC
• Données transversales répétées

• Weiterführende Bildung
• Führungspositionen
• Berufstätige Mütter
• EU-SILC-Daten
• Wiederholter Querschnitt

• Educación post-secundaria
• Posiciones gerentes
• Ocupación laboral de madres
• Datos de EU-SILC
• Sección transversal repetida

JEL classifications:

• J16
• J24
• R23

Acknowledgements

The authors thank three anonymous referees, Manuel Bagües, Stéphane Bonhomme, Alessandra Fogli, Claudia Olivetti, Bernard Salanie and Robert Sauer for comments and suggestions. A special thanks to Juan José Dolado for suggestions. This paper was presented at the International Conference on ‘Labor Market and the Household: Theory and Application’, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin; at the COSME-FEDEA workshop on ‘Gender Economics’, Madrid; at the Dondena internal seminar; at the Department of Economics, University of Turin; at the First Bank of Italy-Dondena-Igier workshop; and at the Alp-Pop Conference, La Thuile. The authors thank all the conference and seminar participants for useful suggestions. All the remaining errors are those of the authors alone.

Notes

1. See http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-decision-making/database/index_en.htm/.

2. Previous studies on career interruptions and female under-representation in top positions typically focus on the role of policies – parental leave and other family policies (e.g. Pylkkanen and Smith, 2003; Pronzato, 2009) or affirmative action policies (e.g. Kogut et al., 2014) or on their impact on wage profiles (Albrecht et al., 1999).

3. In a similar spirit, there are studies that question the knowledge that students have of their future wages, which are generally considered among the main determinants of the returns to education (Manski, 1993; Betts, 1996, Brunello et al., 2004).

4. There is an extensive and growing literature on if and how family income, parental education and, more recently, the home environment affect children's outcomes, among which education is one of the most important (e.g. Black et al., 2005; Plug and Vijverberg, 2005; Pronzato, 2012).

5. For a study of the mobility of university graduates compared with college graduates which also pays attention to the field of study, see Venhorst et al. (2010), who focus on the Netherlands.

6. For a model in which both men and women have to decide about their education and they share care responsibilities, see Casarico and Profeta (2009).

7. This does not necessarily imply that men have more incentives to invest in education than women. If, for instance, the wage of unskilled women is lower than the wage of unskilled men and gender wage gaps decrease in the skill level (see the evidence in Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2014), women have higher incentives than men to use education as a device against the risk of low unskilled wages.

8. EU-SILC focuses on the NUTS-1 level. Unfortunately, for some countries, data for different NUTS-1 regions are aggregated at a higher level.

9. ‘Supervisory responsibility includes formal responsibility for supervising a group of other employees (other than apprentices), whom they supervise directly, sometimes doing some of the work they supervise. It implies that the supervisor or foreman takes charge of the work, directs the work and sees that it is properly done’ (description of SILC User Database Variables, 2009; see http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:EU-SILC).

10. Devine (1994), for example, studies the relationship between the recent rise in female self-employment shares and changes in returns to skill. She finds that self-employment increased more for women who faced increasing potential earnings in wage and salary employment, which suggests that returns to skill were increasing by even more in self-employment.

11. Boden (1999), for example, examines how gender inequality in wage earnings may precipitate some women out of wage employment and into self-employment. He finds that women's lower wage returns to observed worker characteristics have a positive and significant effect on women's decision to switch from wage employment to self-employment.

12. The elaborations based on a sample of women of 25–45 years of age and who have post-secondary education (drawn from EU-SILC 2009) suggest that, using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) occupational categories, the most evident difference between women who are self-employed and women who are employees is the higher share of women who are legislators, senior officials and managers in the first group (14%) with respect to the second group (7%).

13. Outside values are defined as values (1) above the third quartile plus 1.5 times the difference between the third and the first quartiles; or (2) below the first quartile minus 1.5 times the difference between the third and the first quartiles.

14. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Slovak Republic.

15. Modal categories are: a mother and a father having secondary schooling, a mother working, and a mother and a father not being a manager or self-employed.

16. The same analysis was also replicated using the father's education. If the explanatory variables are interacted with the father's education, the results do not change. They are available from the authors upon request.

17. The effect of managerial positions is positive and significant in regions with 4 million or more inhabitants (59% of women in the sample, 36% of regions); the effect of working mothers is positive and significant in regions with 6 million or fewer inhabitants (60% of women in the sample, 78% of regions).

Additional information

Funding

Chiara Daniela Pronzato acknowledges funding from the ERC [grant number StG-201194].