Female labour supply and intergenerational preference formation: Evidence for Mexico

Raymundo Campos-Vazquez and Roberto Velez-Grajales
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Roberto Velez-Grajales: Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Roberto Velez Grajales

Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos from El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos

Abstract: Using a national representative sample for Mexico, we analyse the effect of a husband having a working mother on the probability that he has a working wife. Our results show that labour force participation by a husband’s mother increases the probability of the labour force participation of his wife by 15 percentage points. The effect is mainly driven by males with less than a high school education. One possible confounding factor is the effect of labour force participation of the wife’s mother on the wife’s labour participation decision. However, in a different sample, we do not find any effect of work force participation of wives’ mothers on wives’ decisions to join the labour force. Finally, we test the effect of the work force participation of a husband’s mother on the husband’s preferences regarding child-rearing practices. We find that having a working mother strongly reduces the probability that daughters will be tasked to care for siblings and fosters preferences for a more egalitarian allocation of educational resources among children. Hence, promoting female labour force participation can have important dynamic implications, especially for developing countries.

Keywords: female labour supply; family; preferences; social norms; role models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J12 J16 J22 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dev, nep-lab and nep-lma
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https://cee.colmex.mx/dts/2013/DT-2013-6.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Female Labour Supply and Intergenerational Preference Formation: Evidence for Mexico (2014)
Working Paper: Female Labour Supply and intergenerational preference formation: Evidence for Mexico (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:emx:ceedoc:2013-06

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