Domestic Workers and Social Insurance

Domestic workers provide essential services for the functioning of private households and their members. Yet, domestic workers rarely have access to rights and protection, presenting a very high rate of informality. In Mexico, there are around 2 million domestic workers, with significant occupational segregation by gender, as more than 90% are women. I study a change in the Mexican federal labor law in 2019, expanding the access to social insurance benefits for domestic workers. The new legislation was accompanied by a pilot program of voluntary enrollment, with the objective of transitioning towards a mandatory regime. I analyze the impact of these recent developments on the observed labor outcomes of domestic workers in the quarterly labor force survey.