The role of mothers on female labour force participation: an approach using historical parish records

Jesus Carro, Matilde Machado () and Ricardo Mora Villarrubia

Empirical Economics, 2023, vol. 65, issue 3, No 10, 1345-1384

Abstract: Abstract Using Portuguese parish data from 1675 to 1925, we estimate the relationship between a mother’s participation in the labour force and that of her daughter. We adapt a methodology to prevent bias that originates from potentially non-random missing data. Ignoring the missingness process results in substantial downward-biased estimates of the relationship, even for a proportion of missing values as low as 20 per cent. In contrast, our methodology yields unbiased estimates regardless of the proportion of missing values. We document the existence of a strong, positive association between the mother’s participation and that of her daughter long before the twentieth century’s substantial changes in education and the labour market

Keywords: Female labour force participation; Intergenerational transmission; Historical family data; Church registry data; Non-ignorable missingness; Econometric methods for missing data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s00181-023-02370-5

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