Accounting for Changes in Labor Force Participation of Married Women: The Case of the U.S. since 1959

Bar, Michael and Leukhina, Oksana (2005): Accounting for Changes in Labor Force Participation of Married Women: The Case of the U.S. since 1959.

Abstract

Using a model of family decision-making with home production and individual heterogeneity, we quantitatively investigate the role of changes in several aspects of the joint earnings distribution of husbands and wives (gender earnings gap, gender-specific inequality and assortativeness of matching) and the decline in prices of home appliances in accounting for the dramatic rise in labor force participation of married women since 1959. The implications of the factors examined are tested against changes in participation for disaggregated groups of couples and leisure trends of married individuals, documented from the U.S. population census and time-use survey data.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: labor force participation, married couples, family time allocation, gender earnings gap, home production
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E0 - General > E00 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J20 - General

References

Aguiar, Mark and Erik Hurst (2006), "Measuring Trends in Leisure: Evidence from Five Decades of Time Use Surveys," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.

Attanasio, Orazio, Hamish W. Low and Virginia Sanchez-Marcos (2006), "Explaining Changes in Female Labour Supply in a Life-cycle Model," Working Manuscript, University of Cambridge

Browning, Martin and Metter Gortz (2006), "Spending time and money within the household," Working Manuscript, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

Bar, Michael and Oksana Leukhina (2007), "To Work or Not to Work: Did Tax Reforms Affect Labor Force Participation of Secondary Earners?" University of North Carolina, Working Manuscript.

Bar, Michael and Oksana Leukhina (2007), Technical Appendix to "Accounting for Changes in Labor Force Participation of Married Women: The Case of the U.S. since 1959," online supplement, www.unc.edu/~oksana/Appendix2.pdf.

Caucutt, Elizabeth, Nezih Guner and John Knowles (2002), "The Timing of Births: A Marriage Market Analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, 5: 815-855.

Costa L. Dora (2000), "From Mill Town to Board Room: The Rise of Women’s Paid Labor", The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 4., pp. 101-122.

Fernández, Raquel, Alessandra Fogli and Claudia Olivetti (2004), "Mothers and Sons: Preference Formation and Female Labor Force Dynamics," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119:4, pp.1249-1299.

Galor, Oded and David N. Weil (1996), "The Gender Gap, Fertility, and Growth," The American Economic Review, Vol. 86, No. 3., pp. 374-387.

Gayle, George-Levi and Limor Golan (2006), "Estimating a Dynamic Adverse Selection Model: Labor Force Experience and the Changing Gender Earnings Gap," Working Manuscript, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.

Goldin, Claudia (1990), Understanding the Gender Gap. New York: Oxford University Press.

Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F. Katz, "The Power Of The Pill: Contraceptives And Women’s Career And Marriage Decisions," Journal of Political Economy, 2002, v110, pp. 730-770.

Greenwood, Jeremy, Ananth Seshadri and Mehmet Yorukoglu (2005), "Engines of Liberation," Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 72, No. 1, pp. 109-133, 01.

Heckman, James J. (1979), “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica, 47(1), pp.153- 61.

Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly

Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0 30 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Population Center [producer and distributor], 2004, http://www.ipums.org.

Jones, Larry. E., Rodolfo E. Manuelli and Ellen R. McGrattan (2003), "Why are MarriedWomenWorking So Much?" Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Research Department Staff Report 317.

Juhn, Chinhui and Kevin M. Murphy (1997), "Wage Inequality and Family Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 72-97.

Knowles, John (2005), "Why are Married Men Working So Much?" University of Pennsylvania, Working Manuscript.

McGrattan, Ellen R., Richard Rogerson, and Randall Wright (1997), "An Equilibrium Model of the Business Cycle with Household Production and Fiscal Policy", International Economic Review, Vol 38, No.2, May, pp. 267-90.

Mulligan, B. Casey and Yona Rubinstein (2002), "Specialization, Inequality, and the Labor Market for Married Women," University of Chicago, Working Manuscript.

Mulligan, B. Casey and Yona Rubinstein (2008), "Selection, Investment, and Women’s Relative Wages Over Time," forthcoming in Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Olivetti, Claudia (2006), "Changes in Women’s Hours of Market Work: The Role of Returns to Experience," Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(4), pages 557-587, October.

Vandenbroucke, Guillaume (2006), "A Model of the Trends in Hours," University of Southern California, Working Manuscript.