Análisis de la heterogeneidad provincial en el desempleo por sexo. Caso Ecuatoriano. Periodo 2015 – 2016

Abstract

The unemployment gaps’ analysis by sex and territorial disparities, has been carried out in some developed countries and lately in some of the region. According to these investigations it is evident that this phenomenon exists and is influenced by personal, cultural, political, demographic or economic characteristics. This paper pretends to analyze the heterogeneity of the unemployment gap by sex at the provincial level in Ecuador, removing differences in characteristics between men and women; with the purpose of determine the existence of net gaps, which are related to labor market demand factors such as: the degree of provincial competitiveness, the capacity to create formal employment and a demographic or cultural factor measured through the femininity index. The study is based on a methodology that uses the estimation of multivariate decomposition for nonlinear response models proposed by Yun (2008), afterwards, a relation of the net gaps obtained was made with the demand factors according to Duque, García, Herrera-Hidárraga, & Lopez-Bazo (2015). In addition, a set of macro regions was developed through the MAX-P spatial aggregation algorithm exposed by Duque, Church, & Middleton (2011). The main results indicate that indeed the unemployment gaps are not fully explained by the characteristics of each sex (male, female), and that this phenomenon is observed mainly in a significant way in the provinces of the Costa region. In addition, these net gaps are related to the Unique Competitiveness Index (IUC) for 2015 and mainly to the femininity index for the 2015-2016 study period, being more representative in the macro regions denominated as zone 2 and zone 4.