Relative Cohort Size, Relative Income, and Married Women's Labor Force Participation: United States, 1968-2010

摘要

In the United States between 1968 and 1985, the labor force participation rate (LFP) among married women in their first 15 years out of school increased by 67 percent. In the following 15 years it increased by only 7 percent and then declined by 1 percent in the most recent decade. Figure 1 graphs the patterns of labor force participation and hours worked by race among married women between 1968 and 2010. For all races the patterns are similar for both labor force participation and hours worked; andwhile the increases ended around 1990 for whites and other non-white races, they continued for African Americans up to about 2000. In all cases there has been little increase—or even a decline—since about 2000. Although one might attribute the increases to the fact that it was becoming more acceptable for married women with children to be in the labor force, this fact does not explain why the increases began in the first place. The 67 percent growth in the period 1968-1985 can be placed in context bynoting that the labor force participation of married women aged 25-34 increased by only about 20 percent in the entire period from 1890 to 1965, despite the influence of industrialization and two World Wars.