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International Labour Organization (ILO) Employment Policy Unit Employment Strategy Department

Globalization, economic policy and employment: Poverty and gender implications By James Heintz http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/download/esp2006-3.pdf [full-text, 91 pages]

[excerpt] This study - Globalization, economic policy and employment: Poverty and gender implications was initially commissioned in 2005 to take stock of recent literature and existing empirical evidence regarding economic growth, economic policies, employment and poverty through an engendered approach. Globalization is a process which affects all economies to varying degrees and has had both negative and positive influences on economic growth and employment, depending on the economic predisposition of a given economy, particularly in international trade, the set of macroeconomic policies adopted and how they are laid out in the overall development process and economic evolution. The study is, therefore, an attempt to analyse the overall impact of globalization and macroeconomic policies on employment and poverty trends with a specific gender perspective, or an attempt to engender employment and poverty implications of macroeconomic policies. The study also forms a part of the ILO’s efforts to address the social dimension of globalization, in order to promote a fair and inclusive globalization through productive and decent employment for all.

Tables Table 1 Estimates of the Employment Elasticity of Growth…………………………..8 Table 2 Labour force participations rates, disaggregated by sex, 1980-2010 ……….16 Table 3 Selected statistics on employment and productivity in various regions and world…….....18 Table 4 Unemployment rates disaggregated by sex, 2003 …………………………..19 Table 5 Share of women’s and men’s informal employment by employment status category………………...25 Table 6 Working poor as a percentage of total employment, 1990 and 2004 ……….30 Table 7 Relative poverty rates: working poor poverty rates by sex and employment status category as a percent of the poverty rate for formal, private nonagricultural private wage workers…………....31 Table 8a Poverty rates by household type, 1998/9, Ghana…………………………….35 Table 8b Ratio of non-earners to earners (15+) by household type, 1998/9, Ghana…..35 Table 9 List of employment and economic policy variables…………………………40 Table 10 Impact of policy and economic variables on total employment, unbalanced dynamic panel estimates, 1970-2003, 16 low- and middle-income Countries……40 Table 11 Impact of policy and economic variables on women’s and men’s Employment, unbalanced dynamic panel estimates, 1970-2003, 16 low- and middle income countries……………….…………………………………….41 Table 12 Inflation-reduction episodes and deviations from long-run employment trends, disaggregated by sex………………………………..……………......45 Table A1 Critical Values of Panel Unit Root Tests, Im, Pesaran and Shin technique (p-values in parentheses)…………………………………………………….72

Figures Figure 1 World GDP growth per capita and its long-run trend, 1961-2003……………5 Figure 2 Long-run trends in average per capita GDP growth, select country groupings, 1961-2003………………..6 Figure 3 Ratio of women’s employment to men’s employment, selected countries, 1970-2003………………19 Figure 4 Average rate of per capita GDP growth and annual changes in informalization …………………………..…..21 Figure 5 Estimates of informal non-agricultural employment as a percentage of total non-agricultural employment, 1994-2000… ……23