‘Nobody Wants to Work Anymore’: Lifetime Wage Experiences and the Decline of Male LFP in the United States

Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart
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Remy Levin: University of Connecticut

No 2025-02, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: Male labor force participation (MLFP) has declined sharply over the past 50 years in the United States. We show that a key driver of this decline is changes in mens’ beliefs about the returns to work, shaped by their lifetime experiences of aggregate male wages. Using PSID data tracking individual labor histories linked to state-level real male wage time series, we find that prime-age MLFP increases with the average male wage in a man’s state of birth over his lifetime, even after controlling for current labor market conditions and a host of fixed effects and covariates. A one standard deviation increase in the average experienced aggregate lifetime hourly wage—corresponding to $0.33 and comparable to the difference in 2000 between being born in 1970 in Louisiana and Texas—raises the probability of labor force participation by 10 percentage points. These effects persist for men who migrate and are stronger when restricting to samerace wages. Our findings suggest that lifetime wage experiences shape long-term beliefs about work, generating lasting spillovers from labor demand to labor supply.

Keywords: Male labor force participation; experience effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 E24 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2025-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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