超越工资：萨尔瓦多女性在工作选择中最重要的是什么（英）

Policy Research Working Paper Beyond Wages What Matters Most in Job Choice for Womenin El SalvadorPublic Disclosure Authorized Ivette ContrerasLelys Dinarte-DiazAmparo Palacios-LopezValentina CostaSteffanny Romero Policy Research Working Paper11333 Abstract in this high informality context. Preferences are hetero-geneous: risk averse and rural women place a particularlyhigh premium on safety and childcare, while younger andless risk averse women are more sensitive to entry barri-ers and address related stigma. The results highlight theimportance of labor market frictions that prevent wages This paper studies job preferences among women in ruraland peri-urban areas in El Salvador using a discrete choiceexperiment. Drawing on focus group insights, the analysisvaries wages and five non-wage job attributes—contractstatus, experience requirements, commute safety, residen-tial address disclosure, and childcare availability—andestimates preferences using a mixed logit model. Women This paper is a product of the Development Data Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by theWorld Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions aroundthe world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authorsmay be contacted at icontreras@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility package for this paper is available athttp:// The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those Beyond Wages: What Matters Most in Job Choice for Women in El Salvador Ivette ContrerasLelys Dinarte-DiazAmparo Palacios-Lopez Keywords:Job Preferences, Labor Market Frictions, Women’s Employment 1.Introduction Despite notable progress in expanding labor force participation in developing countries, women continue toface persistent barriers to accessing decent employment. Traditional economic models, such as Rosen’s theoryof compensating wage differentials, posit that wage differences should fully offset job disamenities, therebyequalizing total job advantages (Rosen, 1986). In practice, however, labor market frictions such as search costs, A growing body of research demonstrates that workers value a range of job aspects beyond wages (Mas &Pallais, 2017; Wiswall & Zafar, 2018; Le Barbanchon et al., 2021; Becerra & Guerra, 2023; Van Landeghem etal., 2024). Importantly, preferences over these attributes are heterogeneous and shaped by gender, age, andlife-cycle constraints rather than by wages alone. For example, Wiswall and Zafar (2018) find that women areoften willing to accept lower wages in exchange for greater job flexibility and security, while men prioritizeearnings growth. Experimental evidence further shows that women’s greater risk aversion and caregiving Observed employment choices, however, often conflate preferences with constraints (Hwang et al., 1998;Bonhomme & Jolivet, 2009). Evidence from Latin America suggests that observed job choices, particularlywomen’s concentration in part-time or informal employment, often reflect binding constraints rather thanintrinsic preferences. Using an experiment in Colombia, Bustelo et al.(2023) show that while women exhibit a This paper examines which job attributes women in rural and peri-urban El Salvador value most and quantifieshow much earnings they are willing to forgo in exchange for better non-wage job conditions such as safety,childcare, and lower barriers to job entry. To ensure that the attributes analyzed reflect local realities, we adopta mixed-methods approach. We first conducted a series of focus group discussions to identify the most salientbarriers and job attributes faced by women in the local labor market. Based on these insights, we designed and Second, building on the attributes identified through the focus groups, we designed and implemented a DiscreteChoice Experiment (DCE), covering 951 women across two regions in El Salvador. DCEs offer a powerfulapproach to uncovering these preferences by presenting respondents with hypothetical job options thatsystematically vary in attributes such as salary, flexibility, benefits, and security (Train & Weeks, 2005; Kessleret al., 2019). DCEs allow researchers to estimate the willingness to pay for specific job features, providing Our results show that women are willing to forgo substantial earnings for job opportunities that are safelyaccessible, provide childcare, and have lower barriers to entry, while the value they placed on formal contractsseems to be limited in this context. Commute safety emerges as the most highly valued non-wage