Abstract
It follows from a number of theoretical models of marriage that the scarcer women are relative to men, i.e., the higher the sex ratio, the less married women are likely to participate in the labor force. Such sex ratio effects may be stronger among less educated women. These predictions are tested using individual data from Current Population Surveys for four regions of the U.S. (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), and for the U.S. as a whole, covering the period 1965–2005 at 5-year intervals. Within-region sex ratio variation results from variation in cohort size (due principally to large fluctuations in number of births) and limited fluctuations in the difference between male and female age at marriage. As hypothesized, we find that sex ratios are inversely related to women’s labor force participation, reflecting that ceteris paribus women born in years of peak baby-boom are more likely to be in the labor force than women born in years of peak baby-bust. Additionally, weaker sex ratio effects are found among educated women in two of the four regions of the United States.
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Notes
Earlier, Heer and Grossbard-Shechtman (1981) had documented the large increase in LFP among female baby-boomers and explained it in terms of the low sex ratios characterizing that generation.
The separation between time one is willing to supply and time that remains devoted to self is reminiscent of a similar separation found in Lundberg and Pollak’s (1993) “Separate Spheres” model.
Many more of the same conclusions follow from both categories of models, including the prediction that married men will work more in the labor force if the sharing rule/quasi-wages are more in favor of women.
Note that the more rigid age preferences, the more fluctuations in cohort size will cause marriage market imbalances.
In this regard, Pencavel (1998) posits that variation in male and female wages accounts for less than half of the observed changes in women’s LFP rates over time.
A more complete analysis would endogenize the gender difference in age at marriage, as it is also likely to vary with sex ratios.
Since 1997 this gender difference in age at marriage has shrunk to an average of 1.7, fluctuating between 1.6 and 1.8 (www.census.gov).
The numbers of men and women born in years t, (t + 1), and (t + 2) are roughly equal and appear in both the numerator and the denominator.
A similar table for women of all marital states is available from the authors upon request.
Table 1 indicates that this decline covered all regions: the LFP rate of married women declined in every U.S. region during those 10 years.
We have also estimated models 2 and 3 excluding fertility to gauge the robustness of the sex ratio effects to the exclusion of this variable. Results were very similar to the ones we report and are available from the authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the following for helpful comments: two anonymous referees, Olivia Ekert-Jaffe, Clive Granger, Michael Grossman, David Neumark, Sol Polachek, William Rodgers, and participants at workshops at the College of William and Mary, CUNY Graduate Center, NYU, and Princeton University.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11150-008-9033-6
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Amuedo-Dorantes, C., Grossbard, S. Cohort-level sex ratio effects on women’s labor force participation. Rev Econ Household 5, 249–278 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-007-9014-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-007-9014-1