Oberlin College and Conservatory

What Women Want: Gender Differences in the Quality of Life and Preferences for Location-specific Amenities Across Cities

Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 12:15pm to 1:25pm

King Building, 323
10 North Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074

What Women Want: Gender Differences in the Quality of Life and Preferences for Location-specific Amenities Across Cities, presented by Amanda Weinstein, assistant professor of economics, University of Akron, and coauthored by C. Lockwood Reynolds.

The quality of life literature highlighted the importance of natural and consumption amenities in household preferences for cities to spur economic growth. As policymakers look to invest scarce resources in specific local amenities, they may be missing an important perspective, what women want. As women’s labor force participation and wages have increased and as women wait longer to get married, their relative control over household resources and household decision-making has likely increased. 

Furthermore, the literature on household bargaining provides evidence of gender differences in preferences over spending even within households. However, the quality of life literature does not seem to make any such distinction along gender lines. 

Thus, we separately estimate for unmarried men and women the quality of life across U.S. cities. Our results suggest that city valuations by men and women are correlated, suggesting some commonality in preferences for location-based amenities, but there are also significant deviations in the valuations of some cities. We find men and women do have common preferences for some amenities such as natural amenities, but that there are meaningful differences in preferences across gender lines especially for some public goods.

Amanda Weinstein is an assistant professor of economics, whose research fields include urban and regional economics, applied econometrics, environmental and energy economics, labor economics and microeconomics.  She holds a PhD from the Ohio State University.

Sponsored by the Department of Economics Danforth-Lewis Speakers Series.

Event Type

Lectures/Symposia/Workshops

Departments

Academic, Economics

Website

https://www.uakron.edu/economics/facu...

Contact Person

Terri Pleska, Administrative Assistant

Contact Phone Number

440-775-8483

Contact E-mail Address

terri.pleska@oberlin.edu

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