IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/serxxx/v61y2016i05ns0217590815500757.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How The 1978 Foreign Domestic Workers Law Increased The Labor Supply Of Singaporean Women

Author

Listed:
  • TIAGO FREIRE

    (International Business School Suzhou, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, No. 111 Ren’ai Road, Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, Suzhou Industrial Park, Jiangsu 215123, P. R. China)

Abstract

In 1978, Singapore became the first country to introduce legislation allowing foreign domestic workers to work in the country under special visas. Although Singapore is often cited in the literature as a success story, no studies have quantified the impact of this legislation. In this paper, we use data derived from the Singapore Yearbook of Manpower Statistics between 1974 and 1985 to determine the influence of the 1978 legislation on the labor supply of Singaporean women. We find that the labor supply of women affected by this policy increased by between 3.1% and 6.2%.

Suggested Citation

  • Tiago Freire, 2016. "How The 1978 Foreign Domestic Workers Law Increased The Labor Supply Of Singaporean Women," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(05), pages 1-19, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:61:y:2016:i:05:n:s0217590815500757
    DOI: 10.1142/S0217590815500757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590815500757
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0217590815500757?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. repec:mpr:mprres:6671 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Patricia Cortés & José Tessada, 2011. "Low-Skilled Immigration and the Labor Supply of Highly Skilled Women," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 88-123, July.
    3. Durlauf, Steven N. & Navarro, Salvador & Rivers, David A., 2010. "Understanding aggregate crime regressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 306-317, October.
    4. Caglar Ozden & Christopher R. Parsons & Maurice Schiff & Terrie L. Walmsley, 2011. "Where on Earth is Everybody? The Evolution of Global Bilateral Migration 1960-2000," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 25(1), pages 12-56, May.
    5. Tiago Freire, 2011. "Maids and School Teachers: Low Skill Migration and High Skill Labor Supply," ERSA conference papers ersa10p160, European Regional Science Association.
    6. MaCurdy, Thomas E, 1981. "An Empirical Model of Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Setting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1059-1085, December.
    7. Blundell, Richard & MaCurdy, Thomas & Meghir, Costas, 2007. "Labor Supply Models: Unobserved Heterogeneity, Nonparticipation and Dynamics," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 69, Elsevier.
    8. Stephen G. Donald & Kevin Lang, 2007. "Inference with Difference-in-Differences and Other Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 221-233, May.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    10. Delia Furtado & Heinrich Hock, 2010. "Low Skilled Immigration and Work-Fertility Tradeoffs among High Skilled US Natives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 224-228, May.
    11. Bruce E. Hansen, 2007. "Least Squares Model Averaging," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1175-1189, July.
    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. Tiago Freire, 2018. "Wage Subsidies And The Labor Supply Of Older People: Evidence From Singapore’S Workfare Income Supplement Scheme," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(05), pages 1101-1139, December.

    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. Freire, Tiago, 2013. "How the 1978 changes to the foreign domestic workers law in Singapore increased the female labour supply," MPRA Paper 44448, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. R.D. Mariani & F. C. Rosati, 2022. "Immigrant supply of marketable child care and native fertility in Italy," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(4), pages 503-533, December.
    3. Tiago Freire, 2018. "Wage Subsidies And The Labor Supply Of Older People: Evidence From Singapore’S Workfare Income Supplement Scheme," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(05), pages 1101-1139, December.
    4. Halldén, Karin & Stenberg, Anders, 2013. "The Relationship between Hours of Domestic Services and Female Earnings: Panel Register Data Evidence from a Reform," Working Paper Series 4/2013, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    5. Black, Dan A. & Kolesnikova, Natalia & Taylor, Lowell J., 2014. "Why do so few women work in New York (and so many in Minneapolis)? Labor supply of married women across US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 59-71.
    6. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    7. Emanuele Forlani & Elisabetta Lodigiani & Concetta Mendolicchio, 2015. "Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(2), pages 452-492, April.
    8. Karlsson, Martin & Nilsson, Therese & Pichler, Stefan, 2012. "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger? The Impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic on Economic Performance in Sweden," Working Paper Series 911, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    9. De los Santos, Babur & Kim, In Kyung & Lubensky, Dmitry, 2018. "Do MSRPs decrease prices?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 429-457.
      • Babur De los Santos & In Kyung Kim & Dmitry Lubensky, 2013. "Do MSRPs Decrease Prices?," Working Papers 2013-13, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    10. Jean‐Louis Combes & Xavier Debrun & Alexandru Minea & René Tapsoba, 2018. "Inflation Targeting, Fiscal Rules and the Policy Mix: Cross‐effects and Interactions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(615), pages 2755-2784, November.
    11. Carrieri, Vincenzo & Madio, Leonardo & Principe, Francesco, 2019. "Light cannabis and organized crime: Evidence from (unintended) liberalization in Italy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 63-76.
    12. Luis Alvarez & Bruno Ferman, 2020. "Inference in Difference-in-Differences with Few Treated Units and Spatial Correlation," Papers 2006.16997, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    13. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    14. Hagemann, Andreas, 2019. "Placebo inference on treatment effects when the number of clusters is small," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 213(1), pages 190-209.
    15. Jonathon Adams‐Kane & Julián A. Caballero & Jamus Jerome Lim, 2017. "Foreign Bank Behavior during Financial Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(2-3), pages 351-392, March.
    16. Dinkelman, Taryn & Ranchhod, Vimal, 2012. "Evidence on the impact of minimum wage laws in an informal sector: Domestic workers in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 27-45.
    17. Fitzsimons, Emla & Malde, Bansi & Mesnard, Alice & Vera-Hernández, Marcos, 2016. "Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 113-126.
    18. Stefano Cascino & Ane Tamayo & Felix Vetter, 2021. "Labor Market Effects of Spatial Licensing Requirements: Evidence from CPA Mobility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 111-161, March.
    19. Daniel Schwab, 2020. "Labor protection laws and the drain on productivity: Evidence from India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 383-401, May.
    20. Dröes, Martijn I. & Koster, Hans R.A., 2016. "Renewable energy and negative externalities: The effect of wind turbines on house prices," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 121-141.

    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:wsi:serxxx:v:61:y:2016:i:05:n:s0217590815500757. 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ser/ser.shtml .

    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.