Identifier
1108
Document Type
Discussion Paper
Date of Paper
Summer 8-12-2025
Abstract
The extent to which women participate in the labor market varies greatly across the globe. If such differences reflect distortions that women face in accessing good jobs, they can reduce economic activity through a misallocation of talent. In this paper, we build on Hsieh et al. (2019) to provide a methodology to quantify these productivity consequences. The index we propose, the ”Global Gender Distortions Index (GGDI)”, measures the losses in aggregate productivity that gender-based misallocation imposes. Our index allows us to separately identify labor demand distortions (e.g., discrimination in hiring for formal jobs) from labor supply distortions (e.g., frictions that discourage women’s labor force participation) and can be computed using data on labor income and job types. Our methodology also highlights an important distinction between welfare-relevant misallocation and the consequences on aggregate GDP if misallocation arises between market work and non-market activities. To showcase the versatility of our index, we analyze gender misallocation within countries over time, across countries over the development spectrum, and across local labor markets within countries. We find that misallocation is substantial and that demand distortions account for most of the productivity losses.
Acknowledgements
We thank many seminar participants for useful comments and suggestions, the Yale Economic Growth Center for supporting the Gender and Growth Gaps project through which this work was initiated, and the Development Policy and Finance team at the Gates foundation for financial support. Gottlieb gratefully acknowledges financial support from Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) LRG Grant 943. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of theWorld Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Recommended Citation
Goldberg, Pinelopi, Charles Gottlieb, Somik Lall, Meet Mehta, Michael Peters and Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan. 2025. "The Global Gender Distortions Index (GGDI)." EGC Discussion Paper 1108.