How did the Great Recession Affect Gender Disparity in Europe? An Analysis by a Multidimensional Deprivation Approach

This paper analyses how the Great Recession affected the gender disparity in material and socialdeprivation in Europe. We propose multidimensional non-monetary indexes of absolute andrelative (i.e. using peer comparisons) deprivations estimated on data from the European Qualityof Life Survey for the waves 2007 and 2011. Wefind that the Great Recession decreased genderdisparity over all the dimensions of deprivations. By applying a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, weestimate that this decline of gender gap has depended on a reduction of the difference incharacteristics between genders that has more than offset an increase of gender discrimination.