Determinants of female labour force participation: Evidence from Greece

Abstract

The present study investigates long-term trends in female participation in the Greek labour market. The analysis presented decomposes the growth in the female participation rate between 1992 and 2020. The dataset used is the Greek Labour Force Survey (GLFS). The model type used is a binary age-period-cohort Probit model and a multinomial choice Probit model. A number of assumptions are made to identify the three effects separately. Model I use lagged unemployment as a proxy variable for the period effects and cohort fixed effects – where cohort is a proxy variable for year of birth – together with separate specifications for an interaction term of cohort and region and a linear trend. Model II uses a multinomial Probit model in order to examine whether the decision of a female to enter or not the labour market interacts with the type of work she is choosing, with a number of assumptions again used to identify the three effects separately. The results suggest that the increasing female participation rate is mostly due to cohort effects, when there are also observable age and period effects. Regarding the choice model, results suggest that the period effect has a higher significance on job choice compared with the cohort effect. Age effects are observable and significant in both models.