IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/izalbr/v7y2018i1d10.1186_s40172-018-0067-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Too polluted to work? The gendered correlates of air pollution on hours worked

Author

Listed:
  • Guillermo Montt

    (International Labour Office)

Abstract

Air pollution affects workers’ ability to work by damaging their own health, but also by damaging the health of their dependents. This paper draws on 20 years of air pollution and employment data from Santiago, Chile, a highly polluted metropolis, particularly in fall and winter months. The paper finds that though air pollution is not associated to a reduction in overall hours worked, it does so for women and particularly for women with children. Weeks with pollution at 100 μg/m3, common for Santiago, see double the gender difference in working hours. It is hypothesised that children, unable to go to school, must stay home and cared for. These findings suggest that air pollution may contribute to gender inequality through the gendered-biased distribution of care responsibilities. Pollution brings to evidence gender inequalities in care and, given the gendered nature of care and the geographic distribution of pollution, may contribute to enhance gender and geographic labour market inequalities. Environmental policy may serve to enhance gender equality as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillermo Montt, 2018. "Too polluted to work? The gendered correlates of air pollution on hours worked," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-18, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:izalbr:v:7:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s40172-018-0067-6
    DOI: 10.1186/s40172-018-0067-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40172-018-0067-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1186/s40172-018-0067-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rickard Eriksson & Magnus Nermo, 2010. "Care for Sick Children as a Proxy for Gender Equality in the Family," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 341-356, July.
    2. Jeremy Ginsberg & Matthew H. Mohebbi & Rajan S. Patel & Lynnette Brammer & Mark S. Smolinski & Larry Brilliant, 2009. "Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data," Nature, Nature, vol. 457(7232), pages 1012-1014, February.
    3. Younoh Kim & James Manley & Vlad Radoias, 2017. "Medium- and long-term consequences of pollution on labor supply: evidence from Indonesia," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Bell, Linda A. & Freeman, Richard B., 2001. "The incentive for working hard: explaining hours worked differences in the US and Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 181-202, May.
    5. Janet Currie & Eric A. Hanushek & E. Megan Kahn & Matthew Neidell & Steven G. Rivkin, 2009. "Does Pollution Increase School Absences?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(4), pages 682-694, November.
    6. Aragón, Fernando M. & Miranda, Juan Jose & Oliva, Paulina, 2017. "Particulate matter and labor supply: The role of caregiving and non-linearities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 295-309.
    7. Hollingsworth, Bruce & Ohinata, Asako & Picchio, Matteo & Walker, Ian, 2017. "Labour Supply and Informal Care Supply: The Impacts of Financial Support for Long-Term Elderly Care," IZA Discussion Papers 10988, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. World Bank & Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2016. "The Cost of Air Pollution," World Bank Publications - Reports 25013, The World Bank Group.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Felix Holub & Laura Hospido & Ulrich J. Wagner, 2020. "Urban Air Pollution and Sick Leaves: Evidence From Social Security Data," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_241, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    2. Han, Ahram & Kim, Taejong & Ten, Gi Khan & Wang, Shun, 2023. "Air pollution and gender imbalance in labor supply responses: Evidence from South Korea," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    3. Edoardo Porto & Joanna Kopinska & Alessandro Palma, 2021. "Labor market effects of dirty air. Evidence from administrative data," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(3), pages 887-921, October.
    4. Singh, Prachi & Dey, Sagnik, 2021. "Crop burning and forest fires: Long-term effect on adolescent height in India," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Djoumessi, Berenger Tiague, 2022. "Air Pollution, Avoidance Behavior and Labor Supply: Evidence from the United States," SocArXiv czpf4, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bridget Hoffmann & Juan Pablo Rud, 2022. "Exposure or Income? The Unequal Effects of Pollution on Daily Labor Supply," Working Papers 109, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    2. Edoardo Porto & Joanna Kopinska & Alessandro Palma, 2021. "Labor market effects of dirty air. Evidence from administrative data," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(3), pages 887-921, October.
    3. Liu, Haoming & Salvo, Alberto, 2017. "Severe Air Pollution and School Absences: Longitudinal Data on Expatriates in North China," IZA Discussion Papers 11134, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Luis Sarmiento, 2020. "Waiting for My Sentence: Air Pollution and the Productivity of Court Rulings," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1878, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Luis Sarmiento, 2022. "Air pollution and the productivity of high‐skill labor: evidence from court hearings," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 301-332, January.
    6. Singh, Prachi & Dey, Sagnik, 2021. "Crop burning and forest fires: Long-term effect on adolescent height in India," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Àlex Boso & Boris Álvarez & Christian Oltra & Jaime Garrido & Carlos Muñoz & Germán Galvez-García, 2020. "The Grass Is Always Greener on My Side: A Field Experiment Examining the Home Halo Effect," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-18, August.
    8. Yu SHEN & Wenkai SUN, 2023. "Information and avoidance behaviour: The effect of air pollution disclosure on labour supply in China," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 162(4), pages 665-686, December.
    9. Clara Kögel, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on labour productivity in France," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 22020, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    10. Bellani, Luna & Ceolotto, Stefano & Elsner, Benjamin & Pestel, Nico, 2021. "Air Pollution Affects Decision-Making: Evidence from the Ballot Box," IZA Discussion Papers 14718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Štěpán Mikula & Mariola Pytliková, 2020. "Air Pollution & Migration: Exploiting a Natural Experiment from the Czech Republic," EconPol Working Paper 43, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    12. Shi, Xinjie & Shen, Yu & Song, Ran, 2023. "Living with particles: Disclosure of pollution information, individual responses, and health consequences," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    13. Ron Chan & Martino Pelli & Veronica Vienne, 2023. "Air Pollution, Smoky Days and Hours Worked," CIRANO Working Papers 2023s-15, CIRANO.
    14. Shihe Fu & V. Brian Viard, 2022. "A mayors perspective on tackling air pollution," Chapters, in: Charles K.Y. Leung (ed.), Handbook of Real Estate and Macroeconomics, chapter 16, pages 413-437, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Han, Ahram & Kim, Taejong & Ten, Gi Khan & Wang, Shun, 2023. "Air pollution and gender imbalance in labor supply responses: Evidence from South Korea," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    16. Ye, Hai-Jian & Huang, Zuhui & Chen, Shuai, 2023. "Air pollution and agricultural labor supply: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    17. Leye Li & Louise Yi Lu & Dongyue Wang, 2022. "External labour market competitions and stock price crash risk: evidence from exposures to competitor CEOs’ award‐winning events," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1421-1460, April.
    18. David H Chae & Sean Clouston & Mark L Hatzenbuehler & Michael R Kramer & Hannah L F Cooper & Sacoby M Wilson & Seth I Stephens-Davidowitz & Robert S Gold & Bruce G Link, 2015. "Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, April.
    19. Luigi Bonatti, 2007. "Evolution of preferences and cross-country differences in time devoted to market work," Department of Economics Working Papers 0719, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    20. Henryk Gurgul & Łukasz Lach, 2011. "The impact of regional disparities on economic growth," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 21(2), pages 17-43.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Air pollution; Hours worked; Health; Care; Gender;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:izalbr:v:7:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s40172-018-0067-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.