Gender Inequality, Social Capital and Economic Growth in Turkey

Abstract

Although sociologists have already recognised the gender aspect of social capital, to date it has not yet been systematically investigated in an endogenous growth model. In pursuing this objective theoretically, we draw on Agénor and Canuto (2015) that has offered a three-period (childhood, adulthood, and old age) gender-based Overlapping Generations (OLG) framework, but we explore a different mechanism through which social capital may explain gender equality and prospects for economic growth in Turkey. This paper contributes in several ways to understanding the pivotal role of social capital in the process of economic development. First, social capital gives individuals a great sense of community and feelings of pleasure, and therefore we consider social capital as a possible driving factor of labour productivity. Second, in our model setting, survival rate for adults is determined by the average social capital level of men and women because individuals who are less socially integrated are more likely to have high mortality rates than people with strong ties to their community. Third, we elucidate an important, but understudied, trade-off between time allocated by women to market work and social capital-enhancing activities, and show that these two components of time allocation have opposite effects on intra-household bargaining power.

Keywords: Social capital, Three-period gender-based OLG model, Turkey

JEL Classification: J16, O41