2026-04-13T05:53:07Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:2445/1927662025-12-05T05:52:26Zcom_2072_1057col_2072_478808col_2072_478917

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc Farré, Lídia author Jofre Monseny, Jordi author Torrecillas, Juan author 2023-01-30T12:20:46Z 2024-12-23T06:10:08Z 2023-07-01 2023-01-30T12:20:46Z In this article, we investigate the contribution of increasing travel times to the persistent gender gap in labor market participation. In doing so, we estimate the effect of commuting times on the labor supply of men and women in the USA using microdata from the censuses of the last two decades. To address endogeneity concerns, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that exploits the shape of cities as an exogenous source of variation for travel times. Our estimates indicate that a 10-min increase in commuting time decreases the probability of married women participating in the labor market by 4.4 percentage points. In contrast, the estimated effect on men is small and statistically insignificant. When exploring potential mechanisms behind the gender asymmetry in our results, we do not find evidence that differences in labor market productivity within couples contribute to the larger penalty of commuting times on women. However, we do find that the negative effect on women increases with the number of children and is larger among those originating from countries with more gendered social norms. Based on this evidence, we conclude that in a context of increasing commuting costs the presence of gender norms that attribute to women the role of main caregivers may prevent gender convergence. Demografia Economia del treball Estudis de gènere Demography Labor economics Gender studies Commuting time and the gender gap in labor market participation