The effect of female participation on fertility in Spain: how does it change as the birth comes closer.

In this paper we anaIyze the effect of female labor force participation on fertility decisions. We focus on two issues that emerge when estimating such effect: (i) the endogeneity between fertility and participation; and (ii) the period in which participation is measured with respect to fertility. We account for the first problem by using an empirical model based on the assumption that women decide on labor force participation and childbearing in response to incentives provided by prices and incomes. The second issue is addressed exploiting the panel structure of our data (matched EPA files). which allow us to measure women labor force participation at several points in the time preceding a birth. Our results show that it is important to account for the endogeneity between participation and fertility and that women's attitude toward the labour market changes along the pregnancy.Fertility; Femal labor force participation; Endogeneity;

The effect of female participation on fertility in Spain : how does it change as the birth comes closer

In this paper we anaIyze the effect of female labor force participation on fertility decisions. We focus on two issues that emerge when estimating such effect: (i) the endogeneity between fertility and participation; and (ii) the period in which participation is measured with respect to fertility. We account for the first problem by using an empirical model based on the assumption that women decide on labor force participation and childbearing in response to incentives provided by prices and incomes. The second issue is addressed exploiting the panel structure of our data (matched EPA files). which allow us to measure women labor force participation at several points in the time preceding a birth. Our results show that it is important to account for the endogeneity between participation and fertility and that women's attitude toward the labour market changes along the pregnancy

The age-period cohort problem: set identification and point identification

"Only entropy comes easily" - Anton Chekhov Various methods have been used to overcome the point identification problem inherent in the linear age-period-cohort model. This paper presents a set-identification result for the model and then considers the use of the maximum-entropy principle as a vehicle for achieving point identification. We present two substantive applications (US female mortality data and UK female labor force participation) and compare the results from our approach to some of the solutions in the literature.

Marriage matching, risk sharing and spousal labor supplies

This paper develops the collective marriage matching model, a behavioral and empirically flexible framework that incorporates both marriage matching and intrahousehold allocations. The model shows how marriage market equilibrium and bargaining power within the family are simultaneously determined. The framework provides a solution to the problem of incorporating substitute sex ratios in empirical models of spousal labor supplies. Using data from the US 2000 census, the empirical results show that changes in marriage market tightness, the ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women, have large estimated effects on spousal labor force participation rates, and smaller effects on hours of work and hours in home production. Controlling for variation in labor market conditions across marriage markets has substantive implications for the parameter estimates.marriage matching, intrahousehold allocations, spousal labor supplies, collective model, Choo Siow

Full employment: Are we there yet?

Flavia Dantas and L. Randall Wray argue that the emerging conventional wisdom - that the US economy has reached full employment - is flawed. The unemployment rate is not providing an accurate picture of the health of the labor market, and the common narrative attributing shrinking labor force engagement to aging demographics is overstated. Instead, falling prime-age participation rates are the symptom of a structural inadequacy of aggregate demand - a problem of insufficient job creation and stagnant incomes that conventional public policy remedies have been unable to address. The solution to our long-running secular stagnation requires targeted, direct job creation for those at the bottom of the income scale

Evidence suggests that America’s resource wealth undermines women’s economic and political power

The problem of the ‘resource curse’ for countries with access to a greater abundance of natural resources is well known – but does this curse also extend to the undermining of women’s economic and political power? In new research examining US states, Joel W. Simmons finds that states which produce more resource wealth have lower levels of labor force participation, lower voter turnout rates, and lower political representation among women. He argues that these trends are caused by higher wage flows to male dominated sectors during resource booms, which in turn leads to more women exiting the workforce, and therefore having less political power

Estimating Core Unemployable And Workforce Non-Participants: A Study Of Rural Pennsylvania's Labor Force

Rural unemployment rates persistently have run higher than the national average for many years.  In addition, multiple studies have established that rural underemployment also remains a long-running problem. Unfortunately, it is not yet fully understood how the various factors contributing to rural unemployment and underemployment interact to adversely affect rural labor markets.  The contribution of this paper is to gain insight as to the amount of slack labor force at the county level, focusing on the application to the labor force of rural Pennsylvania. By comparing the actual number of working-age adults presently not in a county’s labor force (using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census) against an estimated number of core unemployable and workforce non-participants (Core NPW) individuals in the county we can generate estimates of the potential up-swing in employment for the regional labor market if participation rates were to become among the best in their national peer group. The study’s methodology and findings provide guidance to policy makers in identifying regions most likely in need of greater assistance as to how to best spend scarce public dollars across various programs aimed at improving local labor markets.

The Impact of Public Health Insurance on Labor Market Transitions

An often-cited difficulty with moving low-income families out of welfare and into the labor force is the lack of health insurance in many low-wage jobs. Consequently, many low-income household heads may be reluctant to leave welfare and thereby lose health insurance coverage for their children. The expansions in the Medicaid program to cover low-income children and pregnant women who are not eligible for cash benefits may help alleviate the problem by allowing disadvantaged household heads to accept jobs which do not provide health insurance. We use a discrete time (monthly) hazard rate model and data from several panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to assess whether expansion of public health insurance to cover children of working parents contributes to increase transitions out of welfare and into employment and reduce transitions into welfare and out of employment. We model spells in progress and spells that start during the sample separately, which allows us to assess the effect on long-term welfare recipients. We find some evidence that expanded Medicaid eligibility for children leads single mothers to exit welfare more quickly; however the effects are not robust to the inclusion of year effects. In addition, the effect appears to be strongest and most consistent among long-term recipients (as proxied by recipients who begin the sample on welfare). We find less evidence of an effect of expanded Medicaid eligibility on transitions into welfare. A somewhat surprising finding is that higher AFDC income limits also appear to have little effect on the probability of such transitions.

Participation Behavior of East German Women after German Unification

The paper studies the determinants of labor force participation by East German women after unification. To isolate the role of preferences on labor force participation from individual characteristics, we develop a panel data model that simultaneously explains participation, employment, and wages. The model, estimated for East and West Germany on the basis of the German Socio-Economic Panel, indicates that distinct preferences could explain the regional difference in participation rates at unification. Afterward East German women became less willing to participate, but the negative participation trend was offset on the aggregate level by changes in characteristics and wages promoting participation.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39862/3/wp477.pd

The consumption-tightness puzzle

This paper introduces a labor force participation choice into a labor market matching model embedded in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium set-up with production and savings. The participation choice is modelled as a tradeoff between forgoing the expected benefits of being search active and engaging in costly labor market search. The model induces a symmetry in firms’ and workers’ search decision since both sides of the labor market vary search effort at the extensive margins. We show that this set-up is of considerable analytical convenience and that it gives rise to a linear relationship between labor market tightness and the marginal utility of consumption. We refer to the latter as the “consumption - tightness puzzle” because (a) it gives rise to a number of counterfactual implications, and (b) it is a robust implication of theory. Amongst the counterfactual implications are very low volatility of tightness, procyclical unemployment, and a positively sloped Beveridge curve. These implications all derive from procyclical variations in participation rates that follow from allowing for the extensive search margin