Abstract. Th e paper contributes by providing new insights into the relationship between female labor force and economic growth in 162 world countries over the period 1990-2012. It was hypothesized that an analysis would reveal a U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and economic growth. Th e analysis is run from two diff erent perspectives -in the fi rst, the relationship is examined for a sample encompassing 162 countries; and in the second -the evidence is disaggregated and the relationship is re-examined within four income-groups (low-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and high-income). To examine these relationships, data on female labor force participation and per capita income are extracted from the World Development Indicators 2013 database, and the relationship is examined by deploying panel data analysis assuming non-linearity between variables. Th e main fi ndings support the hypothesis of the U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and economic growth, however high cross-country variability on the fi eld is reported. Moreover, the U-shaped feminization hypothesis was not positively verifi ed in the case of low-income countries.Keywords: women, female labor force, feminization, U-shaped curve, economic growth JEL classifi cation: J21, O10, O50
IntroductionThe worldwide trends can be summarized as exhibiting a relatively steady relationship between women`s participation in the labor market and the stage of economic growth. A great majority of empirical studies demonstrate that in the initial phases of economic growth female labor force participation tends to be decreasing, while after reaching a certain level of output per capita, a positive relationship emerges and women`s engagement in the labor market grad- ually increases. In this vein, the following paper contributes to the present state of knowledge by providing extensive evidence on re-examination of the hypothesis, according to which the statistical relationship between female labor force participation and economic growth follows the U-shaped pattern.The main goal of the paper is twofold. First, the authors provide new evidence on the U-shaped association between female labor force participation and economic growth in 162 countries over the period 1990-2012. To enrich the analysis, the authors deliberately disaggregate the evidence and exhibits by examining relationships in four distinct income-groups, namely: low-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and high-income countries 1 . Disaggregating the evidence sheds light on the issue providing a novel insight, and allows us to determine whether the U-feminization hypothesis is revealed only in the world sample, or -preferably -is held in respective income-groups. The data used in the consecutive analysis are exclusively derived from the World Development Indicators 2013 database. To meet the main empirical objectives, the preliminary graphical evidences are supported by the static and dynamic panel econometric methods.This...
