Women’s economic outcomes, gender inequality and public policy: findings from the Luxembourg Income Study

In the past two decades, many researchers have used the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data to analyse women’s economic status, or economic gender inequality, across the industrialized countries. Researchers concerned with labour market outcomes have concluded that: (i) women’s labour market status lags men’s in nearly every LIS country and time period; (ii) motherhood is a consequential factor nearly everywhere; while parenthood typically has little effect (or a positive effect) on men’s employment rates and earnings, it weakens women’s everywhere; (iii) against this backdrop of commonality, gendered outcomes vary dramatically across countries; and (iv) variation in policies, or policy packages, explains a substantial share of the observed variation in outcomes. Researchers focused on poverty have found that: (i) in several countries, post-tax-and-transfer poverty is more prevalent among women than men, mothers compared with fathers, and female-headed households relative to male-headed households; (ii) solo mothers everywhere face a heightened risk of low income and/or poverty, especially in the English-speaking countries; (iii) across the LIS countries, single elderly women are also at heightened risk, with the USA standing out as an extreme case; and (iv) cross-national variation in tax-andtransfer policies explains a large share of variation in post-tax-and-transfer income.