Analyzing female labor supply: Evidence from a Dutch tax reform

This paper uses the exogenous variation caused by the Dutch tax reform of 2001 to investigate how married women react to financial incentives. Among OECD countries, the Netherlands has average female labor force participation, but by far the highest rate of part-time work. Our main conclusion is that the positive significant effect of the 2001 tax reform on labor force participation dominates the negative insignificant effect on working hours. Our preferred explanation is that women respond more to changes in tax allowances than to changes in marginal tax rates.

Effects of Trade on Female Labor Force Participation

Male and female labor are imperfect substitutes and some sectors are more suitable for female employment than others. Clearly, expansions of those sectors that use female labor intensively must affect aggregate female labor force participation (FLFP). We suggest that FLFP actually drops when trade and international specialization expand sectors that use female labor intensively. This effect arises because expansions of the former sectors come along with contractions of others. The latter contractions, in turn, induce male workers to move to the expanding sectors, driving female workers out of formal employment. Thus, a country that is exporting female labor content is actually substituting male labor for female. Finally, building on U.S.-Mexican trade data, we provide empirical evidence that support our argument.Trade, Female Labor Force Participation, Fertility, Technological Change

Substitution Between Individual and Cultural Capital: Pre-Migration Labor Supply, Culture and US Labor Market Outcomes Among Immigrant Woman

In this paper we use New Immigrant Survey data to investigate the impact of immigrant women's own labor supply prior to migrating and female labor supply in their source country to provide evidence on the role of human capital and culture in affecting their labor supply and wages in the United States. We find, as expected, that women who migrate from countries with relatively high levels of female labor supply work more in the United States. Moreover, most of this effect remains when we further control for each woman’s own labor supply prior to migrating, which itself also strongly affects labor supply in the United States. Importantly, we find a significantly negative interaction between pre-migration labor supply and source country female labor supply. We obtain broadly similar effects analyzing the determinants of hourly earnings among the employed in the United States, although the results are not always significant. These results suggest an important role for culture and norms in affecting immigrant women's labor supply, since the effect of source country female labor supply on immigrant women's US work hours is still strong even controlling for the immigrant’s own pre-migration labor supply. The negative interaction effects between previous work experience and source country female labor supply on women's US work hours and wages suggest that cultural capital and individual job-related human capital act as substitutes in affecting preparedness for work in the US.gender, immigration, labor supply, human capital

Active labour market policy effects for women in Europe - a survey

We survey the recent literature on the effects of active labor market policies on individual labor market outcomes like employment and income, for adult female individuals without work in European countries. We consider skilltraining programs, monitoring and sanctions, job search assistance, and employment subsidies. The results are remarkably uniform across studies. We relate the results to the relevant level of female labor force participation.Job search, female labor supply, wages, unemployment, schooling, training,

The Effects of Female Labor Force Participation on Obesity

This paper assesses whether a causal relationship exists between recent increases in female labor force participation and the increased prevalence of obesity amongst women. The expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the 1980s and 1990s have been established by prior literature as having generated variation in female labor supply, particularly amongst single mothers. Here, we use this plausibly exogenous variation in female labor supply to identify the effect of labor force participation on obesity status. We use data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and replicate labor supply effects of the EITC expansions found in previous literature. This validates employing a difference-in-differences estimation strategy in the NHIS data, as has been done in several other data sets. Depending on the specification, we find that increased labor force participation can account for at most 19% of the observed change in obesity prevalence over our sample period. Our preferred specification, however, suggests that there is no causal link between increased female labor force participation and increased obesity.female labor force participation, obesity, earned income tax credit

The dynamics of divorce, income, and female labor force participation in Singapore.

Singapore has experienced rising income and female labor force participation over the years. This growth, however, is also accompanied by increasing divorce rate. This paper utilizes Granger causality tests within a multivariate error correction framework to examine the short-run and long-run causal interactions among divorce, income and female labor force participation in Singapore. The long–run results suggest the presence of tradeoffs between income, female labor participation and the family unit, with the twin objectives of economic expansion and the move to draw more women into the labor market having a negative impact on the institution of marriage.causality, divorce, female labor force participation, income, Singapore

Active labor market policy effects for women in Europe - a survey

We survey the recent literature on the effects of active labor market policies on individual labor market outcomes like employment and income, for adult female individuals without work in European countries. We consider skill-training programs, monitoring and sanctions, job search assistance, and employment subsidies. The results are remarkably uniform across studies. We relate the results to the relevant level of female labor force participation.Job search; female labor supply; wages; unemployment; schooling; training; monitoring; participation

The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the rise in female labor supply during WorldWar II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the impact of the war on female labor supply and fertility in the decades following the war. For the war generation of women, the high demand for female labor brought about by mobilization leads to an increase in labor supply that persists after the war. As a result, younger women who reach adulthood in the 1950s face increased labor market competition, which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier. The effect is amplified by the rise in taxes necessary to pay down wartime government debt. In our calibrated model, the war generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust.

Economic Development and Female Labor Force Participation in Turkey: Time-Series Evidence and Cross-Province Estimates

Recently, several researchers hypothesized that female labor force participation rate exhibits a U-shape during the process of economic development. This paper provides time series evidence on female labor force participation rates in Turkey and considers its cross-provincial determinants. Time series evidence shows that after a period of sharp decline the female labor force participation rates have exhibited a slowdown in the rate of decline recently. An upturn in this rate may be expected during the coming decades. In the cross-provincial determinants of female labor force participation the measure of development used is per capita Gross Provincial Product. A quadratic term in per capita Gross Provincial Product and other determinants are included in the models estimated. The models are estimated using data for 67 provinces for three time points-1980, 1985 and 1990. The results affirm the U-shaped impact of economic development. Further, unemployment had a considerable discouraging effect on female labor force participation while the impact of education was strongly positive. The hidden unemployment computations indicate that urban female unemployment rate is underestimated and the discouraged-worker effect for women is substantial.Turkey, development female labor force participation

Part-time Employment of Married Women and Fertility in Urban Japan

Previous studies of female labor force participation in Japan often show that the estimates of female wage rates are "negative" in their single-equation models of labor supply. Based on the common belief that the substitution effect dominates the income effect for female labor supply, to disentangle the problem of the inconsistency is, therefore, necessary for the purpose of predicting the behavior of female labor supply and for guiding policy actions. In this paper, we have estimated a logit model of married women's part-time employment and a fertility equation in the context of a simultaneous-equation model. By specifically differentiating part-time employed married women from full-time employed married women,we find that the structural coefficients of the part-time labor supply are significantly different from those of the full-time labor supply in terms of elasticity. However, contrary to the result of married women's full-time employment, we find little interdependency between married women's decisions to work as part-time employees and their fertility in urban Japan.