COVID-19: a crisis of the female self-employed

A new paper published ONLINE FIRST freely accessible finds for Germany that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are about one-third more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. No comparable gender gap among employees is found.

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COVID-19: a crisis of the female self-employed

by Daniel Graeber, Alexander S. Kritikos and Johannes Seebauer

Published ONLINE FIRST 2021: Journal of Population Economics
OPEN ACCESS and PDF.

GLO Fellow Alexander S. Kritikos

Author Abstract: We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed — particularly women — in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are about one-third more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. We do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, e.g., the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship.

Journal of Population Economics
Access to the recently published Volume 34, Issue 3, July 2021.

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