Female Labor Force Participation and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between female labor force participation and its impact on economic growth The paper further explores whether the impact of the female labor force participation on economic growth is different for developing countries as a whole compared with countries in sub-Saharan Africa SSA I hypothesize that female labor force participation will have a positive effect on economic progress in developing countries including countries in SSA I use a panel data from the World Development Indicators WDI from 1975-2015 and employ a neoclassical growth model to examine how the female labor force participation affect economic growth Using the system GMM estimator my findings reveal that the female labor participation has a positive impact on economic growth in developing countries and that of SSA countries only This paper contributes to the literature analyzing the importance of female labor force participation on economic growth By examining the impact on 139 countries that make up the developing world analysis from this further strengthens the link between female labor force participation and economic growth