Female educational enrollment, labor force participation and economics growth - A panel-data study in Europe

Abstract: During the last decades, female engagement in both educational and working activities has rapidly increased in many European countries. Hence, it is of interest to study whether this increase could be of significant importance for the economic growth. In this thesis, the goal is to examine the relationship between female educational level, female labor force participation and economic growth through the analysis of panel data from 16 European countries In the majority of countries studied, female educational level nowadays is quite high. Furthermore, looking at enrollment data for primary, secondary and tertiary educations one can see an increasing trend over time. However, despite a rapid increase during the last thirty years, we still see significant differences in male and female labor force participation in many European countries. In our study, when studying female labor force participation our results did not show any significant relationship between increases in the labor participation rate and the growth rate. However, for education we found a significant result showing that female educational enrollment is positively associated with economic growth.