TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bacarreza, Gustavo J. Canavire
AU  - Yanez, Gunnar Poppe
        TI  - Can Children's Education Enhance Formal Female Labor Force Participation?
        PY  - 2024/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17429
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17429
        AB  - Developing countries face significant challenges in increasing women's labor force participation and improving job quality, partly due to the substantial presence of the informal sector. This paper examines the case of Bolivia, which has the highest level of informality in Latin America. We empirically investigate whether the expansion of children's access to education in Bolivia provides an additional explanation for the reduction in female participation in the informal sector, as children attending school would require less parental supervision. Using a structural model in which mothers decide to participate in formal markets at a cost inversely related to the likelihood of their children being enrolled in school, we find that the rise in primary school enrollment in Bolivia explains up to 40% of the decline in female workers under age 40 in informal markets. Our findings contribute to the growing body of evidence on the positive impact of children's access to education on women's labor market outcomes in developing countries.
        KW  - Bolivia
KW  - female labor force participation
KW  - structural estimation
        ER  -