Decomposing Culture: An Analysis of Gender, Language, and Labor Supply in the Household

Abstract

Despite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household and the impact of ethnic enclaves, and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact.

Linguistic Structures and Economic Outcomes

“…It is linked to lower female labour force participation and hours worked across countries and individuals (e.g. Mavisakalyan, ; Gay et al ., ). Further, grammatical gender appears to have negative implications specifically for female participation on corporate boards and senior management positions (Santacreu‐Vasut et al ., ).…”

“…Chen, ; Chen et al ., ) and religious shares (e.g. Santacreu‐Vasut et al ., ; Gay et al ., ). The results of these attempts show that the significant relationship between linguistic structures and outcomes persist after these variables are controlled for.…”

“…To mitigate the effect of associated bias, cross‐country studies have introduced some controls for confounding historical factors such as legal origins, colonization history, historical agricultural practices and language families (e.g. Chen et al ., ; Roberts et al ., ; Gay et al ., ).…”

“…The second approach to within‐country comparisons, on the other hand, specifically targets the behaviour of first‐ (e.g. Hicks et al ., ; Gay et al ., ) or second‐generation (e.g. Galor et al ., ) immigrants, and applies an epidemiological approach to separate the effect of language from country‐level unobserved heterogeneity.…”

The effect of culture on home‐ownership

“…The gender roles may lead to different levels of home-ownership culture assimilation. To tackle this issue, we follow the proposal of Gay, Hicks, Santacreu-Vasut, and Shoham (2017) and Table 8). The results described in this section provide evidence of some of the channels (ethnic enclaves, respect for the elderly, and gender roles) through which culture may be transmitted and may operate, providing supplementary empirical evidence in favor of the existence of a cultural effect in the home-ownership decision.…”