Abstract |
Bangladesh is experiencing large increases in the working age population, and proper utilization of this population can help it further develop its economy. The female laborforce participation (LFP) of Bangladesh, at 33 percent, is much lower when compared to male LFP (82 percent). However, further disaggregation indicates a spectacular growth of LFP rate among females aged 20-29 between 1999 and 2013. We thus study the reasons behind it by looking at the 1999 and 2013 Laborforce Surveys (LFS) of Bangladesh. We run logit regressions to study the factors that can affect LFP of a female youth in 1999 and 2013 respectively. We find that the 2013 cohort of female youth is much more educated than their 1999 counterpart. Marriage used to reduce LFP of women in 1999, but by 2013, we find that there is no significant difference between LFP of married and unmarried women. However, the Blinder-Oaxaca (1973) decompositions show that much of the increase can be explained by the more favorable coefficients of the regression, showing that Bangladeshi society, both in urban and rural areas, has a more favorable outlook to allow female youth to offer themselves for employment. |