Education, household production and female labor supply in West Africa

Purpose The factors determining women's labor supply are not yet fully identified, especially in the case of developing countries. The objective of this article is to analyze the effect of education and household production on the married and unmarried women's labor supply in the eight West African Economic and Monetary Union countries. Design/methodology/approach The methodological approach is based on a theoretical model and the estimation of a quantile Tobit on data from the Harmonized Survey of Household Living Conditions (2021). Findings The results show that basic education generally raises labor supply, whereas higher education has heterogeneous and, in some cases, negative effects, which may reflect the scarcity of formal-sector jobs. Household production also shapes female labor supply: in some countries it restricts the market work of married women, while in others the two activities appear to be complements. Relative wage effects are generally weak, which suggests that structural constraints matter more than wage incentives. Practical implications These findings call for policies that align educational investments with labor market demand, reduce the burden of unpaid domestic and care work, and improve women's access to productive employment. Originality/value Our study will contribute to examining the effect of these two factors at the same time while starting from a theoretical modeling of the problem before making rigorous empirical estimates on data, offering the possibility of comparing results between countries.