Higher Education and Female Labour Market Participation

Abstract: While female labour market participation is increasing worldwide, the development in Chile is slow and concentrated to the capital city of Santiago de Chile. Education has been found to increase female labour market participation in several studies, where my thesis contributes to the research with more careful analysis of the effects of higher education. Rather than analysing the joint effect of higher education, I disentangle the effects of different types of institutions of higher education, which allows me to analyse each corresponding effect on female labour market participation. By using data from the national census, and comparing results from the probit model and the linear probability model, I show that university education has the highest effect on female labour market participation, that education at technical centres has a slightly smaller effect, and that education at professional institutes has the smallest effect. Furthermore, by complimenting the thesis with my minor field study (MFS) about women’s policy preferences, I am able to discuss policy implementation with better foundation and support than studies that only rely on economic theory. My results suggest that policies that aim to simplify a combination of family life and career may be an efficient way to increase female labour market participation among women with higher education, where the MFS emphasise work concerning the quality of day care centres. Lastly, the highest valued policy in the MFS is work aiming to reduce the gender wage gap, which when implemented may decrease the impact of cultural values on labour market decisions, and thus further increase labour market participation among women with higher education. Key words: Higher education, female labour market participation, policy preferences, probit model, linear probability model.