The Effect of Settlement Type on the Labour Force Participation of New Zealand Women

Abstract

A key priority of the present government is to improve women’s participation in the workforce, That education, age and reproduction decisions all play an important role in female labour force participation is well documented, what is less well understood is the role played by the geographic context in which these decisions are made – the relationship between participation and place. The aim of this paper is to explore the way in which different types of settlement are associated with different levels of female participation in the labour force. Our findings reveal that place of residence does affect the propensity of women to engage in wage labour – over and above the standard human capital and demographic determinants. The findings are based on analyses of the 1996 census data of over one million New Zealand women of working age. We use the Statistics New Zealand reclassification of urban and rural locations to define settlement types. A unique feature of this study is the explicit consideration of the relationship between partnership, participation and place. We find that not only does the presence of a (male) partner have a strong and statistically significant influence on female participation by that its effect is also very sensitive in settlement type. Particularly interesting is the different effect partners have on female participation in small versus large urban settings.