Publication: A Gender Employment Gap Index (GEGI): A Simple Measure of the Economic Gains from Closing Gender Employment Gaps, with an Application to the Pacific Islands
Date
2022-02-22
ISSN
Published
2022-02-22
Author(s)
Abstract
Despite a policy consensus that
closing gender employment gaps will boost economic growth,
relatively little is known about the size of these gains in
many developing countries. This paper develops a new Gender
Employment Gap Index (GEGI), which is equal to the size of
long-run GDP per capita gains from closing gender employment
gaps. The GEGI is simple and transparent and can be easily
constructed using closed-form expressions for almost all
countries using macroeconomic employment rate data by
gender. The basic variant of the GEGI is the gap between
male and female employment as a share of total employment.
The full GEGI is similar, but instead of using an aggregate
employment gap, the full GEGI is the weighted average of a
“better employment gap” and “other employment gap.” The
basic and full GEGIs are similar (correlation of 0.97), and
both average 19 percent across countries. This means that
GDP per capita in the long run would be almost 20 percent
higher if female employment were exogenously increased to be
the same as men’s (other things being equal). The paper also
provides an application for the Pacific Islands, for which a
simple measure like the GEGI is particularly important given
the lack of alternative estimates.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Pennings, Steven Michael. 2022. A Gender Employment Gap Index (GEGI): A Simple Measure of the Economic Gains from Closing Gender Employment Gaps, with an Application to the Pacific Islands. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37062 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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