Pauline Kohlhase Earns Doctorate with Dissertation on Gendered Growth Models

On September 29, Pauline Kohlhase successfully defended her dissertation in political science at the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences. In “Gendering Growth Models: Care Formalization, Female Employment and Demand Formation,” she examines how the decline of the male breadwinner model, rising female employment, and the increasing formalization of care work since the 1990s have changed national growth models in advanced capitalist economies. In her study, Kohlhase develops three mechanisms through which care regimes and gendered employment structures contribute to distinct forms of demand formation. The first suggests that how care is formalized affects domestic demand by way of income formation; the second, that unit labor costs in the care sector affect price competitiveness and thereby exports; and the third, that female employment stabilizes household income, facilitating access to credit and debt-financed consumption. The mechanisms together explain how different care regimes and employment structures contribute to different growth trajectories: While publicly financed, coordinated care tends to support wage-led consumption, market-driven and low-wage regimes are more likely to reinforce export- or debt-led growth. Four novel time-series cross-sectional datasets, econometric analysis, and case studies on Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the US form the empirical basis of the study. Lucio Baccaro supervised the dissertation at the MPIfG. Pauline Kohlhase joined the IMPRS-SPCE, the MPIfG’s graduate school, as a doctoral researcher in 2022.