Inside the black box: Intra-household inequality and a gendered pandemic

Description

Emerging evidence suggests that COVID-19 has amplified existing gender divisions that disadvantage women. What is the appropriate unit of analysis to study the gendered impact of a pandemic? The study of gender inequality—especially labour market opportunities and outcomes—has largely relied on population-wide differences between men and women. Using over four decades of global data (n = 2.85 million couple units from 45 countries in the LIS repository), we show that intra-household earnings inequality within a household is systemic, prevalent across diverse societies, and present across the entire earnings distribution. Our analysis highlights why accounting for intra-household gender inequality is crucial for understanding and addressing the pandemic’s gendered impact.

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Publisher

Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), asbl

Keywords

Intra-household inequality, Earnings inequality, Pandemic, Lockdown, Gender inequality, LIS database

Source Link URL

http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/797.pdf

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