Full Citation

Title: The Rise of In-and-Outs: Declining Labor Force Participation of Prime Age Men

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: This paper documents that much of the decline in labor force participation of U.S. prime age men comes from “in-and-outs”—who I define as men who temporarily leave the labor force. Individuals moving in and out of the labor force have been an understudied margin of labor supply but account for roughly one third of the decline in participation between 1977 and 2015. Most in-and-outs take an occasional short break in between jobs but are otherwise attached to the labor force. Examining explanations for the rise of in-and-outs, I find that half of the rise has come from married or cohabiting men, and I show that this portion of the increase can be explained by a wealth effect from their partners’ growing earnings, using variation in the growth of female wages across demographic groups. Additionally, I find that changes in household structure, particularly from young men increasingly living with their parents, account for much of the rest of the rise of in-and-outs. To examine both effects within a unified framework, I construct and estimate a dynamic model of labor supply and household formation. The model estimates imply that labor supply factors are responsible for nearly the entire rise of in-and-outs, while changes in labor demand have contributed little.

Url: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/coglianese/files/coglianese_2017_in-and-outs.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Coglianese, John

Publisher: Harvard University

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS, IPUMS Time Use - ATUS

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: