Essays on the Economics of Labor and Gender

Narasimhan, Saigeetha

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Essays on the Economics of Labor and Gender Public Deposited

Analytics

Download PDF

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/bk128c775

Abstract

This dissertation contains three chapters analyzing the effect of labor policy and regulation on labor market outcomes, as well as cultural determinants of intimate partner violence. The first chapter, “What is the effect of Salary History Bans on the Labor Supply of Mothers?”, examines the impact of state-level Salary History Bans (SHBs) on the employment status of mothers in the United States. SHBs, which prohibit employers from using salary history during the hiring process, aim to address gender pay disparities and promote fairer hiring practices. Existing literature has demonstrated the effectiveness of SHBs in reducing the gender pay gap by increasing wages for women. This paper investigates the effect of these increased wages on the employment rates of mothers. Utilizing a pseudo-panel approach, data from the Current Population Survey, and staggered implementation estimators developed by Callaway and Sant'Anna, I find that SHBs have little impact on overall employment rates among mothers. However, significant effects are observed within subgroups, particularly for mothers with at least one child under five, where SHBs increase employment rates by 2.12 percentage points. These findings suggest that SHBs not only contribute to narrowing the gender pay gap but also positively influence the employment outcomes of mothers with young children. The second chapter, “The Role of State-level Wage and Hour Protections under Weakened Federal Enforcement”, investigates the impact of the Supreme Court decision in EPIC Systems v. Lewis on the incidence of wage theft, specifically focusing on overtime violations. The 2018 ruling mandated individual arbitration for wage and hour disputes, potentially undermining collective legal recourse at the federal level and thus deterring employees from reporting violations. Utilizing data from the Current Population Survey's Outgoing Rotation Group/Earner Study, we examine differential changes in overtime work and apparent underpayment for overtime across states with varying strengths of administrative enforcement mechanisms. By imputing weekly earnings based on reported hours and wages, and identifying discrepancies indicative of underpayment, we identify instances of overtime violations. Our analysis, employing two-way fixed effects and event study methodologies, finds no significant differential impact of the EPIC decision between strong and weak enforcement states. Robustness checks excluding states without codified overtime statutes confirm these findings. This study contributes to the wage theft literature by developing a novel measure of overtime underpayment and leveraging unique state-level enforcement variation. Finally, the third chapter, “The Relationship between Female Deity Temple Exposure and Intimate Partner Violence” explores the historical roots of attitudes towards women by analyzing the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) and historical exposure to female deity temples in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Using hand-collected data on historical temples, this study constructs a district-level measure of exposure to goddess temples. Employing an conditional on observables methodology and individual-level IPV data from the National Family and Health Survey, this paper investigates whether historical exposure to female deities correlates with current IPV incidence. The results suggest a counterintuitive association: higher exposure to female-deity temples is associated with increased IPV. This suggests a complex relationship between religious beliefs and gender norms, where cultural reverence for goddesses might not translate into respect for women, potentially exacerbating IPV.

Creator