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Title: Explaining Cross-Country Variation in Female Labour Supply: Evidence from U.S. Immigrants
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2005
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Abstract: Despite that the latest 30 years has been a period of increasing female labour force participation in the U.S. and elsewhere, there still remains substantial variation in hours worked and female labour force participation across countries. Female labour force participation in the OECD countries ranged from 46.3 in Italy to 76.5 in Norway in 2000, where the U.S. qualify among the countries with a higher participation rate at 70.7 (see Table 1 and OECD Employment Outlook). This variation may originate from differences in preferences towards work, but may also be the result of economic factors, such as the functioning of the labour market, income inequality and the incentives these elements provide. In economic terms, we may separate the two causes as either being related to preferences or to the budget restriction.In this paper, I aim to explore possible explanations to the observed cross-country differences in hours worked and participation. I study labour supply (in terms of hours worked and participation rates) of immigrant women in the United States, and relate their labour supply to the aggregate labour supply in their country of origin. By studying immigrant women working in the same labour market, I can disentangle whether the budget restriction hypothesis or the preference hypothesis is the most plausible. Women all operating on the same labour market but with different cultural backgrounds should not diverge in their labour supply decisions if the market is the major determinant for female labour supply decisions. If, on the other hand, immigrant women do diverge while confronted with the same labour market, and diverge in a way consistent with the labour supply of women in their countries of origin, it supports the preference hypothesis. To get a preview of the findings; I can not rule out that source country labour supply affects the labour market attachment of immigrant women in the U.S. However, the range of estimates is wide and suggests that the effect mainly is driven by differences in childbearing and educational patterns across immigrant groups. The remainder of this paper unfolds as follows: Section II discusses related literature, Section III describes the data, Section IV presents the empirical findings and Section V summarizes the conclusions.
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Authors: Holmlund, Helena
Publisher: Stockholms Universitet
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration
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