Jessica Y. Pan

Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics

Research Interest: Labor Economics, Applied Microeconomics, Economics of Education

Job Market Paper

Gender Segregation in Occupations: The Role of Tipping and Social Interactions [paper] Abstract: A large literature documents two important facts concerning women and the labor market in the last century: the movement of women into the formal labor market and the persistent segregation of men and women into different occupations. This paper explores how the labor market responded to the entry of women into occupations and documents that the dynamics of occupational segregation are highly non-linear and exhibit 'tipping'-like patterns. Using census data from 1910 to 2000, I show that the evolution of male share over time for occupations that experience a relatively large inflow of females shows striking evidence of an inverse-S pattern. Focusing on the 1940s through the 1980s, I find relatively strong evidence of discontinuities in male employment growth at candidate tipping points ranging from 30 to 60 percent female in white-collar occupations and 12 to 25 percent female in blue-collar occupations. Depending on the decade, occupations experience an 18 to 50 percentage point decline in net male employment growth at the candidate tipping points. The observed tipping behavior appears consistent with a simple framework based on Schelling's (1971) social interactions model where occupational tipping results from male preferences toward the fraction female in their occupation. Supporting the model's predictions, evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that tipping points are lower in regions where males hold more sexist attitudes toward the appropriate role of women. Alternative explanations such as omitted variables, changes in the production technology and learning fall short in explaining the full set of empirical observations.

Working Papers

Sexism and Women's Labor Market Outcomes [paper] (Joint with Kerwin Charles and Jonathan Guryan) Abstract: We examine the extent to which cross-market differences in women's relative labor market outcomes are determined by differences across markets in sexism - defined as views about the appropriate role women should play in society. Using data from the GSS to measure sexism, we show that selection-corrected gender wage gaps and relative employment rates are significantly related to the degree of sexist views held by the median male, but not with male sexism at the 10th or 90th percentile. Consistent with a standard labor supply model in which sexism lowers women's offered wage, we find lower relative employment of women in more sexist markets is concentrated among women who would have worked few hours in sexism's absence. Finally, we show that the patterns described for male sexism are not apparent for female responses to the GSS questions. The results are robust to a variety of extensions, including alternative strategies for correcting for gender skill differences, and selection. We argue that these results are consistent with a taste-based model of discrimination (Becker (1957)), and are especially striking in light of results from Charles and Guryan (2008) who find that racial wage differences are related to the left tail of the racial prejudice distribution, rather than the median or right tail - exactly as the prejudice model predicts for a group whose prevalence in the labor market much less than that for women. The results suggest that sexism has important implications for the workings of labor markets for men and women.

Outsourcing Household Production: Demand for Foreign Domestic Helpers and Native Labor Supply in Hong Kong [paper] (Joint with Patricia Cortes) Abstract: Migration of women as domestic workers from developing to developed countries is a growing phenomenon. In Hong Kong, foreign domestic workers (FDWs) account for 6 percent of the labor force and among households with young children, more than one in three hires at least one. This paper investigates the effects of the availability of foreign domestic workers on women's decisions regarding labor supply and welfare. We develop and estimate a structural model of labor force participation and the decision to hire a FDW. We find a strong complementarity between the two choices, particularly for mothers of very young children, suggesting a high degree of substitution between the mother's and the FDW's time. From simulation exercises we estimate that the availability of FDWs at current prices generates a monthly average consumer surplus for mothers of children aged 0-5 of US\$130-200, and has increased their labor force participation rate by 10 percentage points relative to mothers of older children. Cross-country time-series evidence comparing Hong Kong and Taiwan support the findings of our micro approach.

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