ERF 26th Annual Conference
Do Wage Subsidies Alleviate Employment Discrimination Against Women? The Case of Turkey
No.
ERF26_83
Publisher
ERF
Date
September, 2020
Topic
H2. Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
J4. Particular Labor Markets
D6. Welfare Economics
J2. Demand and Supply of Labor
J1. Demographic Economics
This paper investigates the employment effects of the employment subsidy programs implemented in Turkey since 2008. The Turkish government put into practice active labor market programs (Law 4447 Provisional Articles 7 and 10) to generate new employment for all women and younger men, which are the relatively disadvantaged groups in the Turkish labor market. We use a nationally representative micro-level dataset and a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the causal effect of these programs. We find that although these incentive programs are relatively costly, they help to decrease discrimination faced by women especially in the low-skilled blue-collar jobs and high-skilled white-collar jobs. These wage subsidies result on average a 1.2 percentage points increase and at most, a 3.5 percentage points increase in the share of women in newly hired workers.
Authors
Hüseyin Ikizler
Assistant Professor, OSTIM Technical University
Authors
Çağla Ökten
Associate Professor, Bilkent University