"One of the most dramatic economic transformations of the past century has been the entry of women into the labor force. While many theories explain why this change took place, we investigate the ...process of transition itself. We argue that local information transmission generates changes in participation that are geographically heterogeneous, locally correlated, and smooth in the aggregate, just like those observed in our data. In our model, women learn about the effects of maternal employment on children by observing nearby employed women. When few women participate in the labor force, data are scarce and participation rises slowly. As information accumulates in some regions, the effects of maternal employment become less uncertain and more women in that region participate. Learning accelerates, labor force participation rises faster, and regional participation rates diverge. Eventually, information diffuses throughout the economy, beliefs converge to the truth, participation flattens out, and regions become more similar again. To investigate the empirical relevance of our theory, we use a new county-level data set to compare our calibrated model to the time series and geographic patterns of participation." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Längsschnitt; historisch. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1940 bis 2005.
The authors build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty to examine whether the career penalties faced by mothers change over the life course. They broaden the focus beyond wages to also ...consider labor force participation and occupational status and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to model the changing impact of motherhood as women age from their 20s to their 50s (n = 4,730). They found that motherhood is "costly" to women's careers, but the effects on all 3 labor force outcomes attenuate at older ages. Children reduce women's labor force participation, but this effect is strongest when women are younger and is eliminated by the 40s and 50s. Mothers also seem able to regain ground in terms of occupational status. The wage penalty for having children varies by parity, persisting across the life course only for women who have 3 or more children.
Using recent results in the measurement error literature, we show that the official US unemployment rate substantially underestimates the true level of unemployment, due to misclassification errors ...in the labor force status in the Current Population Survey. During the period from January 1996 to August 2011, the corrected monthly unemployment rates are between 1 and 4.4 percentage points (2.1 percentage points on average) higher than the official rates, and are more sensitive to changes in business cycles. The labor force participation rates, however, are not affected by this correction. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Conventional histories of women's labor force participation in Europe conceptualize the trends in terms of a U-shaped pattern. This contribution draws on historical research to challenge such an ...account. First, it demonstrates that the trough in participation is in part statistically manufactured by uncritical reliance on official sources that systematically undercount women workers. Second, it exploits nonstandard sources to construct alternative estimates of women's participation. Third, it analyzes the reconstructed rates to determine their congruence with neoclassical economics and modern empirical studies. Not all posited relationships time travel. Supply-side factors such as marital status and number and age of children are major determinants of modern women's decision to enter the labor force, yet appear less prominent in historical contexts. Instead, the demand for labor seems decisive. Finally, the U-shaped curve is not entirely a statistical artifact, but appears to evolve at higher levels of participation than usually suggested.
The share of the population aged 60 and over is projected to increase in nearly every country in the world during the period 2005 - 50. Population ageing will tend to lower both labour-force ...participation and savings rates, thereby raising concerns about a future slowing of economic growth. Our calculations suggest that OECD countries are likely to see modest - but not catastrophic - declines in the rate of economic growth. However, behavioural responses (including greater female labour-force participation) and policy reforms (including an increase in the legal age of retirement) can mitigate the economic consequences of an older population. In most non-OECD countries, declining fertility rates will cause labour-force-to-population ratios to rise as the shrinking share of young people will more than offset the skewing of adults towards the older ages. These factors suggest that population ageing will not significantly impede the pace of economic growth in developing countries." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Querschnitt; prognostisch; Evaluation; anwendungsorientiert. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1950 bis 2050.
In 1990, the US had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 OECD countries. By 2010 its rank had fallen to seventeenth. We find that the expansion of “family-friendly” policies, ...including parental leave and part-time work entitlements in other OECD countries, explains 29 percent of the decrease in US women's labor force participation relative to these other countries. However, these policies also appear to encourage part-time work and employment in lower level positions: US women are more likely than women in other countries to have full time jobs and to work as managers or professionals.
THE GLOBAL DECLINE OF THE LABOR SHARE Karabarbounis, Loukas; Neiman, Brent
The Quarterly journal of economics,
02/2014, Letnik:
129, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The stability of the labor share of income is a key foundation in macroeconomic models. We document, however, that the global labor share has significantly declined since the early 1980s, with the ...decline occurring within the large majority of countries and industries. We show that the decrease in the relative price of investment goods, often attributed to advances in information technology and the computer age, induced firms to shift away from labor and toward capital. The lower price of investment goods explains roughly half of the observed decline in the labor share, even when we allow for other mechanisms influencing factor shares, such as increasing profits, capital-augmenting technology growth, and the changing skill composition of the labor force. We highlight the implications of this explanation for welfare and macroeconomic dynamics.
It remains unclear to what extent shifts in gender attitudes are products of changes in micro-level characteristics, macro-level social transformations, or net cohort and period transitions. We test ...these questions on 20 waves of data from the General Social Survey, 1977–2016 (N = 45,125). Compositional change in individual characteristics accounts for almost 78 percent of the cohort variation in gender attitudes, but only 32 percent of the historical transformations. Macro dynamics are responsible for an additional 60 percent of the historical change in gender attitudes. Two structural forces are associated with historical transitions in American gender attitudes: gender equality in the labor force and the rise of men’s overwork. Each of these factors accounts for a significant proportion of the period variation in gender attitudes in our analysis, and the rise of men’s overwork appears to account for the puzzle of the “stalled revolution” in the 1990s and its “restart” in the mid-2000s. The conservative swing in 1994–2004 correlates with the rise of overwork, as the proportion of men who overwork soared during this period when traditional gender roles were reinforced.
India has experienced steady economic growth over the last two decades alongside a persistent decline in women's labor force participation (LFPR). This paper explores the relationship between ...economic development and women's labor supply using state-level data spanning the period 1983-4 to 2011-2. While several studies suggest a U-shaped relationship between development and women's labor force participation, our results suggest that at the state level, there is no systematic U-shaped relationship between level of domestic product and women's LFPR. On examining the relationship between the structure of the economy and women's economic activity, we find that it is not economic growth but rather the composition of growth that is relevant for women. Further, our results suggest that aggregate changes in the proportion of women in the workforce can be mostly attributed to the movement of the workforce across sectors rather than changes in the proportion of women workers within a sector.
Women who migrate to the United States often face structural and cultural obstacles when joining the workforce. The US-born daughters of these women show considerable upward mobility, yet recent ...scholarship finds substantial variation in the employment of second-generation women by parental country of origin. This study assesses whether gender traditionalism in the parental country of origin has a persistent effect on the labor force participation of partnered second-generation women in the United States. An analysis of 1995–2015 Current Population Survey data supplemented with parental origin country characteristics finds that gender-traditional behaviors, religions, institutions, and attitudes are each associated with a lower likelihood of female labor force participation (FLFP). We propose that the successful intergenerational transmission of conservative cultural repertoires from the first to the second-generation accounts for these relationships. Conservative religious context is the best overall predictor of lowered second-generation FLFP. However, patriarchal attitudes and institutions in the parental birthplace best account for the participation of women with parental origins in Latin America and the Caribbean, while the effect of religious context is strongest among women with parental origins in Asia and Europe.
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