Search Results
Journal Article
From the valley to the summit: a brief history of the quiet revolution that transformed women's work
We can have a meaningful discussion today about "women at the top" only because of a quiet revolution that took place 30 years ago.
Discussion Paper
Wives' work and family income mobility
Over the past 30 years, married women in the United States have significantly increased their labor market activity and become an integral factor in their families? ongoing economic wellbeing. This change raises questions about the economic impact of two-earner families becoming the norm. Do American families now need both a working husband and a working wife to have any hope of getting ahead or to keep from falling behind? How much does a wife?s labor market activity (participation, hours, and earnings) matter in her family?s ability to make income gains, hold its place relative to other ...
Report
Is there still an added-worker effect?
Using matched March Current Population Surveys, we examine labor market transitions of husbands and wives. We find that the ?added-worker effect??the greater propensity of nonparticipating wives to enter the labor force when their husbands exit employment?is still important among a subset of couples, but that the overall value of marriage as a risk-sharing arrangement has diminished because of the greater positive co-movement of employment within couples. While positive assortative matching on education did increase over time, this shift in the composition of couple types alone cannot account ...
Journal Article
Women's work
Journal Article
Changes in behavioral and characteristic determination of female labor force participation, 1975-2005
For policymakers, identifying the factors contributing to changes in labor force participation over time is important for setting appropriate policy regarding the nation?s productivity. Although the factors contributing to such changes over the past six decades have been well documented, more recent trends in women?s labor force participation beg further scrutiny. ; This article dissects the changes in the labor force participation rate over the past thirty years among women aged twenty-five to fifty-four. Using Current Population Survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the author ...
Conference Paper
Women as labor force participants: effects of family and organizational structure
Once the very structure of work itself can be questioned, we can address the issue of how to make work more family-friendly and thus build a structure for life courses that allows more people to balance their home and work lives.
Working Paper
Working with children? the probability of mothers exiting the workforce at time of birth
Recent trends in the labor force participation of women have brought much public attention to the issue of women opting out. This paper explores the decision of working women to exit the labor market at a time of major transition?the birth of a child?utilizing linked vital statistics, administrative employer, and state welfare records. The results indicate that, consistent with utility maximization theory, women are not just opting out but rather are accurately assessing the potential opportunity and direct labor market costs of their exit decisions and are making workforce exit decisions ...
Report
Nature or nurture? learning and female labor force dynamics
In the last century, the evolution of female labor force participation has been S-shaped: It rose slowly at first, then quickly, and has leveled off recently. Central to this dramatic rise has been the entry of women with young children. We argue that this S-shaped dynamic came from generations of women learning about the relative importance of nature (endowed ability) and nurture (time spent child-rearing) in determining children's outcomes. Each generation updates the beliefs of their parents, by observing others' outcomes. When few women participate in the labor force, most outcomes are ...
Report
Why are married women working so much?
We study the large observed changes in labor supply by married women in the United States over 1950-1990, a period when labor supply by single women has hardly changed at all. We investigate the effects of changes in the gender wage gap, technological improvements in the production of nonmarket goods and potential inferiority of these goods on understanding this change. We find that small decreases in the gender wage gap can explain simultaneously the significant increases in the average hours worked by married women and the relative constancy in the hours worked by single women, and single ...
Journal Article
Women's labor market involvement and family income mobility when marriages end
The last 30 years have seen a dramatic change in women's social and economic status in the United States, particularly in their labor market activity. When women were less involved and less successful in the labor market, many of them gained access to market income only or primarily through marriage or cohabitation with a working man. As a result, women and children were especially vulnerable to the death of a partner, separation, or divorce. ; In this article, the authors examine three decades of data on the relationship between women's labor market activity and the income mobility of ...