The Jamaican Female Skills Surplus and Earnings Deficit: A Holistic Explanation

This paper addresses the poor socio-economic performance of Jamaican females despite superior human capital. A holistic explanation exploring female lifestyle choices is advanced since discipline-specific theories fail to explain occupational clustering and the resulting earnings gap. It is hypothesized that both reflect lifestyle constraints, which may be linked to characteristics of the social environment. Since these constraints affect different groups of women differently, then policies designed to reduce occupational dis-similarity and female-male earnings gap must adapt a dis-aggregated analysis. Catherine Hakim's model of female dis-aggregation and data from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Survey, LSMS, are used to advance the underlying thesis