Women's labor force status relative to that of men is an important benchmark of their status in society. In developed economies, researchers seek to measure women's well-being by examining factors influencing women's labor force participation, and by measuring and understanding the gender gap in wages, to determine why women's wages are less on average than those of men, even after controlling for education and labor market experience.1 But in developing countries, earnings in the paid labor force outside the household are often not a major source of family income. In Côte d'Ivoire, for example, data from the 1988 Living Standards Measurement Survey indicates that of the men and women aged 12 or older who worked in the year prior to the survey, only 27.6 percent of the men and 5.6 percent of the women did any work as employees. The remainder were self-employed or worked as "free" labor in family enterprises.In poor countries where women are primarily engaged in family enterprises, issues such as gender gaps in wages and glass ceilings in promotion are largely irrelevant. Instead, the major concerns are how resources are allocated to women and girls within families; whether women engaged in self-employment face barriers in access to credit and other factors of production; and whether women have rights to inherit or purchase land or own other assets.This essay discusses how the role of women in the labor force varies with the level of economic development. Although there is diversity across countries at 1 Altonji and Blank (1999) provides an extensive and useful summary of this literature.

Despite the importance of living arrangements for well-being and production, the effect of changes in household income on living arrangements is not well understood. This study overcomes the identification problems that have limited the study of the link between income and living arrangements by exploiting a discontinuity in the benefit formula for the social pension in South Africa. In contrast to the findings of the existing literature from wealthier populations, we find no evidence that pension income is used to maintain the independence of black elders in South Africa. Rather, potential beneficiaries alter their household structure. Prime working age women depart, and we observe an increase in children under 5 and young women of child-bearing age. These shifts in co-residence patterns are consistent with a setting where prime age women have comparative advantage in work away from extended family relative to younger women. The additional income from old age support may induce a change in living arrangements to exploit this advantage.

Children, Gender, Intrahousehold allocation, D13, J13, J16, J22,

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