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The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of labour force participation and the factors affecting labour supply among older persons in Ghana. Both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply were analysed.

The paper uses nationally representative samples of household and individual data in 2016–2017 – Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7) data – for the analysis. Heckman’s sample selection model is used to analyse both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply.

The study found that older persons in Ghana who are pensioners, widowed, have high levels of education, poor health status and live in urban areas are less likely to participate actively in the labour market. On the other hand, being head of a household, married and owning certain assets increase the likelihood of an older person to work. Furthermore, pensions, household headship and post-secondary education have negative effects on the labour supply as having them make older persons work fewer hours per week compared to their counterparts.

This research is the first study to examine the prevalence of old age employment and factors that affect labour market decisions of older persons in Ghana. It also adds to the limited literature on pension and retirement decisions in developing countries.

The global non-attainment of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 indicates the issue of rising gender inequality. Educated women shying away from the labor force is worsening it. The labor market dynamics might shape the female labor force participation (FLFP). The present study recommends a policy framework by analyzing this dynamism across 125 countries over 1990–2020.

The Two-step System Generalized Method of Moments is used to address endogeneity bias. Dynamism in policy environment is captured by relaxing the Ceteris Paribus condition in the empirical model.

Results show that the moderation of labor market factors has increased with the attainment of Secondary and Tertiary Education. Results also highlight that these factors promote FLFP through prospective opportunities but also hinder female participation through employer’s discrimination despite educational attainment.

Studies have examined the role of education on FLFP. However, prior research has not investigated the role of labor market factors in influencing the impact of education on FLFP. The consideration of these factors will help in addressing the global policy lacuna by recommending a policy framework for enhancing FLFP through internalization of the externalities exerted by the labor market factors, and thereby, help the countries attaining the SDG 5 objectives.

Persons with disabilities (PwD) are generally less likely to be employed than the general population. The paper aims to investigate whether access to assistive technologies (AT) impacts labour force participation in the disabled population.

The study utilises the nationally representative survey on disability in India conducted in 2018 through multi-stage sampling by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), Government of India. The instrumental variable (IV) approach has been employed to infer causality between AT and labour market participation.

The study found that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) in India amongst the disabled population was 29% in the age group of 15–65 years in 2017–2018, as compared to 52% in the general population. Around two-thirds of the PwD respondents who were advised to acquire aid appliances acquired them, implying limited access to AT. The probability of LFPR in disabled population increases by 26.6% with access to AT particularly in urban areas.

Persistent issues such as lack of adequate amenities, poor literacy and a lack of vocational skills need to be addressed to improve labour market outcomes for the disabled population in rural areas.

Despite its role in promoting distributive justice and inclusive development, research on equity gaps in access to AT and its impact on labour market outcomes is scant. This is the first paper that provides empirical evidence on the impact of access to AT on LFPR in the context of low- and middle-income countries.

We test the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis (UIH) for a set of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

We empirically investigate the nexus between unemployment and labour force participation employing structural vector autoregressive methods for panel data.

We find that shocks in unemployment produce long-lasting, negative effects on participation, testifying to a discouraged worker effect.

Our results do not support the validity of the UIH in high-income economies. This has relevant implications for policy making and macroeconomic models.

This study investigates how enhancing information and communication technology (ICT) affects female economic participation in sub-Saharan African nations.

Three female economic participation indicators are used, namely female labour force participation, female unemployment and female employment rates. The engaged ICT variables are fixed broadband subscriptions, mobile phone penetration and Internet penetration. The Generalized Method of Moments is used for the empirical analysis.

The following main findings are established: First, there is a (1) negative net effect in the relevance of fixed broadband subscriptions in female labour force participation and female unemployment and (2) positive net effects from the importance of fixed broadband subscriptions on the female employment rate. Secondly, an extended analysis is used to establish thresholds at which the undesirable net negative effect on female labour force participation can be avoided. From the corresponding findings, a fixed broadband subscription rate of 9.187 per 100 people is necessary to completely dampen the established net negative effect. Hence, the established threshold is the critical mass necessary for the enhancement of fixed broadband subscriptions to induce an overall positive net effect on the female labour force participation rate.

This study complements the extant literature by assessing how increasing penetration levels of ICT affect female economic inclusion and by extension, thresholds necessary for the promotion of ICT to increase female economic inclusion.

This work analyzes female immigrants’ integration in the dimensions of education, labor market participation and fertility in 15 European countries, considering individual characteristics, including cultural background, host countries’ attitudes towards immigrants, the role of women in the family and country-specific integration policy. All these aspects taken together are crucial to understand the main patterns of integration focusing on gender differences.

We focus on second- and first-generation male and female immigrants between the age of 25 and 41, with a length of stay of at least ten years. Enrollment ratios for tertiary education in parents’ countries, the total fertility rate and the female labor force in the mother’s country represent ethnic background. Diversity in the destination regions is captured by local attitudes towards immigrants, the perceived role of women and national policies to integrate migrants [Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX)]. The data are drawn from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 2010–2018. Our results are based on ordinary least squares (OLS) and logit estimates; multilevel analysis was conducted.

We find significant evidence of gender role transmission from mother to daughter; age at immigration seems to be crucial to examine the importance of the culture of origin among immigrants. However, females are responsive to attitudes toward immigrants and gender equality in receiving societies, while integration policies, by defining the set of opportunities, may contribute to both genders’ tertiary education and women’s probability of being in the labor force.

This work underlines that integration policies favoring equal rights as nationals may contribute to both women’s tertiary education and their probability of being in the labor force.

We explore female integration in Europe in the dimensions of education, labor market, fertility and the role of both immigrants’ cultural heritage and specific aspects of destination countries. Previous research, particularly in the USA, has generally focused on some of these features at the expense of a more comprehensive approach. This study builds upon the existing literature and contributes to it by taking a multifaceted approach to female integration in Western Europe, which presents not only an institutional context different from the USA but also some heterogeneity with respect to integration policies and socioeconomic factors.

The participation of females in economic activity remains a challenge, and received a lot of attention for a better labor policy discourse. The empirical research focused widely on the relationship between female labor force participation (FLFP) and economic development, called the feminization U-shape hypothesis. However, the linear/nonlinear relationship has been questioned due to empirical and methodological anomalies. Hence, this study aims to extend the previous work by reexamining this relationship in Pakistan.

The annual data from 1980 to 2021, the unit root tests augmented Dickey–Fuller and Phillips and Perron, the conventional autoregressive distributed lag bound test approach by including the quadratic-term of GDP per capita and the novel Sasabuchi–Lind–Mehlum (SLM) U test (2010) used for empirical estimation.

The findings revealed the prospects of a long-run nonlinear association between FLFP and economic development in Pakistan. However, an inverse U-shape exists between the female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) and GDP per capita, predicting that FLFP may decline in the future.

The traditional feminization U-shape hypothesis has little empirical support in the case of Pakistan. Therefore, the Government of Pakistan should enhance the enabling environment for females through the provision of better job opportunities, technical skills, on-the-job training and social security benefits during all phases of economic development.

The conventional approach of testing U-shape is insufficient. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, therefore, this study incorporated a wider data set in a time series that is less evident, an advanced methodology SLM U test (2010), to validate the feminization U-shape hypothesis in Pakistan for the first time.

COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.

To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.

Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.

These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.

Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.

India started economic reforms at a rapid pace to catch up the world economy by following the services-led-growth model during the post-liberalisation period. Over the years, the growing unemployment rate posits a re-look into the dynamics of growth model for wider work force participation. In this backdrop, the paper aims to examine the dynamics of structural changes in employment pattern in view of economic growth led by services-led growth model in India.

The study employs a non-linear autoregressive model (NARDL) to examine the effect of the growth rates in three broad economic sectors namely agriculture and allied, services and industry on work force participation representing the employment opportunities in India.

The results highlight that the rapid expansion of the service sector has not occurred with enough employment opportunities by the same rate. By contrast, the growth in the industrial sector significantly creates employment opportunities in the short and long run. These results support the industry led growth model over the services for sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the country.

The study relies on combined labour force participation rates rather than gender-specific rates. Further, the regulatory, working conditions and economic incentives may affect the gender-specific engagement of the labour force in three broad sectors.

The results offer important insight into changing patterns in employment with policy lessons. A wider workforce force participation calls for expansion of manufacturing activities through pro-industry programmes.

The study makes pioneer efforts to examine the dynamics of labour force participation with respect to the growth of three broad economic sectors of the Indian economy. The results provide new insights with policy implications for the changing employment pattern and policy response.

This study investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by analysing two waves of household surveys (in 2003–2004 and 2018–2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.

The study applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the re-centred influence function (RIF) regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution.

The results unambiguously show that there is a significant gender wage gap in Nigeria at all points along the wage distribution, such that for the two surveys used and after nearly two decades, men still earn more than women. That is, the log wage difference between males and females is statistically significant at all points between the 10th and the 90th quantiles. In 2003–2004 period, the authors found that most of the wage difference was significantly accounted for by the wage structure effect, whilst the composition effect was negative and only significant at the bottom of the wage distribution. Since the 2018–2019 period, the authors found that there has been a visible change such that most of the gender wage gap is now accounted for by the composition effect at all points along the wage distribution. Another interesting finding is that there has been a general decline in the gender wage gap along the entire wage distribution, such that inequality was higher in 2003–2004 than in 2018–2019. This decline is bigger at the top than at the bottom of the wage distribution. The authors also found that, contrary to some of the studies on the wage gap, the raw gaps for the two surveys appear to show inverted U-shape, but the gap has fallen quickly since the 2018–2019 period. Thus, the authors found strong evidence of a “sticky floor” compared to a “glass ceiling” effect in both periods, and this becomes more pronounced over time. In terms of the contributions of individual covariates on gender pay gap in Nigeria, the authors found that urban residence, unionisation, education and occupation variables exhibit major influence. However, the effects of covariates on the composition and wage structure components of the wage gap have changed over time.

The major policy implication of these findings is that to address the gender wage gap in Nigeria, policy should focus more on how labour is rewarded and improving human capital for women.

This study is a novel paper in Nigeria that has investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by extending the focus of literature in three ways. First, the authors applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the RIF regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution. Second, the authors used sample selection bias to account for the non-randomness of participation in wage employment. And third, the authors applied similar analysis to two waves of household surveys (in 2003/2004 and 2018/2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.