Culture, Intermarriage, and Immigrant Women's - Labor Supply

Z. Eylem Gevrek (), Deniz Gevrek () and Sonam Gupta ()
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Z. Eylem Gevrek: Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany
Sonam Gupta: Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

No 2012-28, Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz from Department of Economics, University of Konstanz

Abstract: We examine the impact of culture on the work behavior of second-generation immigrant women in Canada. We contribute to the current literature by analyzing the role of intermarriage in intergenerational transmission of culture and its subsequent effect on labor market outcomes. Using relative female labor force participation and total fertility rates in the country of ancestry as cultural proxies, we find that culture matters for the female labor supply. Cultural proxies are significant in explaining number of hours worked by second-generation women with immigrant parents. Our results provide evidence that the impact of cultural proxies is significantly larger for women with immigrant parents who share same ethnic background than for those with intermarried parents. The fact that the effect of culture is weaker for women who were raised in intermarried families stresses the importance of intermarriage in assimilation process. Our findings imply that government policies targeting labor supply of women may have differential effect on labor market behavior of immigrant women of different ancestries.

Keywords: culture; immigrant women; intermarriage; labor supply; immigrant assimilation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J15 J22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2012-11-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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