Measuring gender disparities in unemployment dynamics during the recession : evidence from Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Passinhas, Joana
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Proença, Isabel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/17745
• topic: Unemployment; Persistence; Unobserved Heterogeneity; Dynamic Random Effects Models; Gender Discrimination

We research gender differences in unemployment incidence and persistence during the debt crisis in Portugal. A dynamic random effects probit model is estimated to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity and for the ‘initial conditions’ problem. The estimation uses data from four waves of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (ICOR) between 2010 and 2013. We find strong evidence of persistence in unemployment, and an indication that men are more prone to endure the negative implications of previous unemployment. Simultaneously, we found evidence of higher probabilities of unemployment for women through a fixed effect that aimed to capture gender discrimination in an unstable labour market. Results suggest that policies to boost employment should accommodate a gender dimension and also have a special focus on the long-term unemployed.