Tatjana Kleineberg

“Gender Barriers, Structural Transformation and Economic Development”

At the May 2024 CORE Week, Tatjana Kleineberg of the World Bank presented new research showing how changes in gender roles around the world have been important drivers of structural change and economic development. In “Gender Barriers, Structural Transformation and Economic Development,” a paper coauthored with Guarav Chiplunkar of the University of Virginia, Kleineberg uses cross-national data spanning five decades from 1970 to 2018 to show that while gender differences in occupational and sectoral employment have declined across countries during this period, salient differences remain.

Specifically, gender segregation in employment is largely driven by variation across sectors in low- and middle-income countries, but by variation across occupations within sectors in high-income countries. Beyond the differences in employment, Kleineberg and Chiplunkar find that gender wage gaps have declined more slowly and without a clear correlation with economic development. By using a Roy model and a development accounting framework, they show that reductions in gender-specific differences in occupational and sectoral preferences, as well as wages, account for more than a third of the observed employment transitions towards non-agriculture. Further, these changes also explain around 20 percent of real output growth in their sample, which includes countries at different stages of economic development.