Timothy Halliday, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Abstract

We investigate how both the gender composition of migrant flows and the allocation of labor within a household is altered as a means of coping with risk. Using a panel of Salvadoran households, we show that productivity shocks in the agricultural sector, which is mostly composed of men, were primarily met by increases in male migration. At the same time, agricultural shocks also significantly increased the number of hours that the household devoted to agricultural activities. In contrast, damage sustained from the 2001 earthquakes exclusively stunted female migration. We argue that the reason for this is that the earthquakes increased the demand for home production as evidenced by our finding that households that were severely affected by the disaster substantially increased the number of hours devoted to domestic activities. Data from the US Census indicates that there is a two dollar gender wage gap among Salvadoran migrants suggesting that the opportunity cost of retaining women was substantially lower than it was for men.