Does it pay for women to volunteer?

Arbeitspapier

This paper estimates the economic and non-economic returns to volunteering for prime-aged women. A woman's decision to engage in unpaid work, and to marry and have children, is formulated as a forward-looking discrete choice dynamic programming problem. Simulated maximum likelihood estimates of the model indicate that an extra year of volunteer experience increases wage offers in part-time work by 8.3% and wage offers in full-time work by 2.4%. The behavioral model also reveals an adverse selection mechanism which is consistent with the negative returns to volunteering found in reduced-form wage regressions. The negative selection is driven by differential unobserved market-productivity and heterogeneous marginal utilities of future consumption. The structural estimates also imply that the economic returns to volunteering are relatively more important than non-economic returns, and introduction of a tax-credit for volunteering-related childcare expenses would substantially increase volunteer labor supply and female lifetime earnings.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 6784

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions ; Forecasting Models; Simulation Methods ; Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
• Subject: female labor supply ; marriage ; fertility ; negative selection ; attrition ; dynamic programming ; structural estimation ; simulated maximum likelihood ; volunteering

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Sauer, Robert M.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/62387
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET