Full Citation
Title: The Plateau in U.S. Women's Labor Force Participation: A Cohort Analysis
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2012
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: After going up steadily for the last century, the female labor force participation (FLFP) rate in the United States suddenly leveled off in the early 1990s. Using March Current Population Survey data from 1968 to 2010, I investigate changes in FLFP rates and related socioeconomic outcomes of women. I find that, to a first approximation, the plateau in FLFP can be characterized as a leveling off in labor force participation for birth cohorts from the 1950s on. I also conduct a series of shiftshare analyses that decompose changes in labor force participation into within-group and composition effects, with groups defined by educational attainment, marital status, and child-rearing status. These analyses show that both the rising FLFP up through the cohorts of the early 1950s and the subsequent plateau appear within virtually all groups. The main qualification to this simple summary is that, among women under the age of 30, rising FLFP continued beyond the cohorts of the early 1950s up through those of the early 1970s. The prolonged upward trend in that age group was closely intertwined with the trends away from early marriage and childbearing. I recommend that this constellation of facts be used to guide further research on the causes of trend shifts in womens labor force participation and related socioeconomic outcomes.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Young Lee, Jin
Publisher: Michigan State University
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
Countries: