Recent Trends in Underemployment and Determinants of Underemployment in Turkey

Underemployment is an important problem as unemployment for most of the developing countries. This paper aims to examine the impact of individual as well as labor market characteristics on being underemployment in Turkey. We use micro level data obtained from nationally representative data sets of the Household Labor Force Surveys of 2000 and 2001. In the analysis we employ a two-step estimation method in which we consider the sample selection problem. The analyses are carried out for men and women, and for urban and rural resident individuals, separately. Our results indicate that regardless of being men or women, individuals who live in the urban areas are more likely to be underemployed. Increases in education level seem to decline the probability of being underemployed for both male and female. For both male and female we find that there is an inverse U-shaped relation between underemployment and age. Regardless of being male or female, while living in the most developed region of Marmara decrease the likelihood of being underemployed, living in the least developed region of East Anatolia increase the probability of being underemployed