COVID-19
- We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed — particularly women — in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are about one-third more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. We do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, e.g., the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measuresWe investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed — particularly women — in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are about one-third more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. We do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, e.g., the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship.…
Author details: | Daniel GraeberORCiDGND, Alexander KritikosORCiDGND, Johannes SeebauerORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00849-y |
ISSN: | 0933-1433 |
ISSN: | 1432-1475 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34131364 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of population economics |
Subtitle (English): | a crisis of the female self-employed |
Publisher: | Springer |
Place of publishing: | Berlin |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2021/06/11 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2024/04/15 |
Tag: | COVID-19; decomposition methods; gender; income; representative real-time survey data; self-employed |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 4 |
Number of pages: | 47 |
First page: | 1141 |
Last Page: | 1187 |
Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Fachgruppe Volkswirtschaftslehre |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |