BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//jEvents 2.0 for Joomla//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT UID:74cbcdb0fe1ae9fd7471caf248473059 CATEGORIES:Lecture / Reading / Talk CREATED:20250124T104949 SUMMARY:Talk by Prof. Kevin Denny- Cross-country evidence on whether female representation in parliament matters for income inequality DESCRIPTION:Description:\nIn almost all countries, the majority of parliamentarians are male, often by a large degree. This largely reflects historical contingenc ies including the absence of universal suffrage and other forms of patriarc hy. In recent decades, there has been a notable trend around the world towa rds greater representation of women in parliaments and, more generally, gre ater political participation by women. A natural question to ask is whether this affects political outcomes or government policies. A small but growin g research literature has looked at this in several countries around the wo rld, including India. These papers mostly consider policy outcomes associat ed with women’s interests and generally suggest that women’s interests are better represented with more women either in parliament or in government.\n In this lecture we will consider a non-gender-based outcome: income inequal ity as measured by the Gini Index. There is considerable evidence that wome n are more egalitarian than men so, a priori, one might expect lower inequa lity where there are more women in parliament. We use fixed-effects panel d ata models on 140 countries between 1997 and 2021 to examine if this is the case. We find in general results consistent with this hypothesis: a higher share of women in parliament is indeed associated with lower income inequa lity. A more challenging question is whether this is a causal relationship & not just a correlation because of some omitted time-varying chara cteristic of countries. To address this, we use an Instrumental Variables e stimator, leveraging some plausibly exogenous variation in the women’s shar e in parliament. This leads to a much larger estimated effect on women’s in equality. We conclude that greater political participation by women is like ly to lead to more equal incomes.\nSpeaker Bio:\nProf. Kevin Denny is an As sociate Professor in the School of Economics, UCD of which he is also the h ead.  He is also a fellow of the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. He studied Economics in University College Dublin (1980-1984) and Nuffield Col lege, Oxford (1984-86, 1987-1989). He had research posts in Oxford Universi ty 1986-87 and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London (1989-1992). He too k up a position in UCD in 1992.  His research interests are in applied micr oeconomics, particularly education and labour markets. He has also publishe d in health, political science, psychology and health journals.  \n X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

Description:
In almost all countries, the majority of parliamentarians are male, often by a large degree. This largely reflec ts historical contingencies including the absence of universal suffrage and other forms of patriarchy. In recent decades, there has been a notable tre nd around the world towards greater representation of women in parliaments and, more generally, greater political participation by women. A natural qu estion to ask is whether this affects political outcomes or government poli cies. A small but growing research literature has looked at this in several countries around the world, including India. These papers mostly consider policy outcomes associated with women’s interests and generally suggest tha t women’s interests are better represented with more women either in parlia ment or in government.

In this lecture we will consider a non-gender- based outcome: income inequality as measured by the Gini Index. There is co nsiderable evidence that women are more egalitarian than men so, a priori, one might expect lower inequality where there are more women in parliament. We use fixed-effects panel data models on 140 countries between 1997 and 2 021 to examine if this is the case. We find in general results consistent w ith this hypothesis: a higher share of women in parliament is indeed associ ated with lower income inequality. A more challenging question is whether t his is a causal relationship & not just a correlation because of so me omitted time-varying characteristic of countries. To address this, we us e an Instrumental Variables estimator, leveraging some plausibly exogenous variation in the women’s share in parliament. This leads to a much larger e stimated effect on women’s inequality. We conclude that greater political p articipation by women is likely to lead to more equal incomes.

Speaker Bio:
Prof. Kevin Denny is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, UCD of which he is also the head.  He is also a f ellow of the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. He studied Economics in University College Dublin (1980-1984) and Nuffield College, Oxford (1984-8 6, 1987-1989). He had research posts in Oxford University 1986-87 and the I nstitute for Fiscal Studies, London (1989-1992). He took up a position in U CD in 1992.  His research interests are in applied microeconomics, particul arly education and labour markets. He has also published in health, politic al science, psychology and health journals.  

DTSTAMP:20260712T134011 DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20250129T160000 DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20250129T170000 SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR