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Women's Labour Supply and Household Insurance in Africa

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  • Marcela Umaña-Aponte
  • Sonia Bhalotra

Abstract

This paper investigates whether cyclical variation in women's labour supply in Africa contributes to smoothing household consumption. We find little support for this hypothesis. Using comparable individual data on about 0.5 million women in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries merged with country level panel data on GDP during 1987-2006, we find that the within-country relationship of women's employment and income is, on average, positive. This finding is robust to controls for country-specific trends and potentially correlated shocks.

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  • Marcela Umaña-Aponte & Sonia Bhalotra, 2012. "Women's Labour Supply and Household Insurance in Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-066, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2012-066
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    Business cycles; Insurance; Labour supply; Women;
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