Determinants of Female Unemployment Duration in Chile’s Regions: Evidence from the National Employment Survey, 2016–2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22370/pe.2026.20.5952Keywords:
nationality gap, labor market overqualification, regional heterogeneity, AFT duration models, Oaxaca-Blinder decompositionAbstract
This article combines three complementary econometric strategies —Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), an accelerated failure time (AFT) duration model, and an Oaxaca Blinder decomposition— to estimate the determinants of female unemployment duration in Chile’s regions between 2016 and 2026, using microdata from the National Employment Survey (n=62,107). The OLS model, with a cubic age specification and robust inference via Bootstrap and the Wald test, is estimated pooled, by region, and by year. Nationality is the factor with the greatest substantive incidence: Chilean women remain unemployed 1.47 months longer than foreign women, an effect significant in 11 of 16 regions. The study also documents an overqualification paradox and a cubic age pattern. As a central robustness check, the results are replicated using a log-normal AFT model, which confirms the sign and significance of the findings and estimates that Chilean women have an expected unemployment duration 21.7% longer than foreign women. An Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition further shows that only 14.8% of this gap is explained by observable differences between the two groups, while 85.2% remains unexplained by endowments.
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