Capital market integration and gender inequality

This study explores the effects of globalization on gender inequality. Specifically, we describe how, in terms of capital market integration, globalization alters the gender gap in wage rates through changes in labor demand for capital-intensive sectors. Consequently, via changes in the bargaining positions of men and women, globalization leads to opposite effects on the couple's labor supply and fertility decisions in capital-importing and capital-exporting countries. Moreover, by considering the properties of the industrial structures of capital-importing and capital-exporting countries, we show that globalization induces empirically observed declines in fertility rates throughout the world.