Determinants of female labour supply in the urban labour markets and the effects of female labour supply on the wage structure: An application to Turkey

This study attempts to explore the determinants of the female labour force participation and the effects of female labor supply on the wage structure of female and male labor in the urban Turkey. It adopts an approach which emphasises women?s sociodemografic characteristics and their family backrounds. The evidence comes from a Household Budget Survey conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institution. Factors underlying female labor force participation are discussed on the basis of 10 logistic regression models: one for the whole data set, the others for the subset of young women, women in the middle age, older women, married women, unmarried women, married with children, married women without children, married women with pre-school age children and married women with school age children. The findings of the models indicate the importance of marital status, age, education, economical status and the number and age of children as determinants of participation. Odds of participation increases for the unmarried status and decreases with age group. It is much more likely for single women and for younger women to participate in the labour force. University and higher graduates are more willing to participation compared to less educated women. When the income level of household gets worse willingness to participate increases. Willingness to participate is positively affected by the number and also age of children. Therefore, contrary to a common hypothesis in the literature, the role of women as mothers in the household does not affect the participation negatively. The econometric results also suggest that in urban areas, growth in female labor supply affects the wages of both female and male wages positively, and lower the earning inequality between high school and college educated males. The findings indicate that women were not closer substitutes to high school or college graduate males but complements to high school and college graduated males. In terms of male skill levels, males, ıt appears that the wages of college graduate men relative to high school graduate men are more sensitive to the changes in the female labor supply.