Gender differences in preferences for job amenities are an important determinant of the gender wage gap. The existing literature concentrates on workplace flexibility, which women value higher than men because it facilitates the combination of market labor, household work, and childcare. Recent work in behavioral economics emphasizes the importance of a different job amenity - work meaning or mission orientation - and suggests that women value meaning higher than men. I will present the results of two recent projects. First, a collective labor supply model that allows to analyze the choice of hours worked, flexibility, and time spent with children at the family-level. Choosing flexibility may reduce wages and decision power and thus affect the distribution of family resources. A hidden cost of recent policies aimed at increasing flexibility may be that wages and bargaining power of women decrease. Second, I will combine the labor economics (flexibility) with the behavioral (meaning of work) perspective. Choosing occupations and sectors with high meaning (like health and education) may restrict the flexibility choice and force women to reduce their labor supply. |
