Dynamics of female labour force participation in France

Roger Collet () and Diego Legros
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Roger Collet: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Diego Legros: LEDi - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dijon - UB - Université de Bourgogne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This article formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labour force participation. Relying on theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behaviour, we estimate a dynamic probit model with correlated random effects using longitudinal data to allow for a dynamic structure. The model is applied to a panel of married women drawn from the 1997–2002 French Labour Force surveys in order to represent their participation behaviour. It is estimated by maximum simulated likelihood. Our results show that women's decisions to go out to work are characterized by significant state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and negative serial correlation in the transitory error component. In addition, we find that the presence of young children in a woman's household reduces her labour participation, but unequally according to their age and number. As expected, educational level has a positive impact on women's participation. Last, a rise in the husband's wage is found to raise female participation initially and to lower it subsequently. This empirical finding suggests that leisure may not systematically be a normal good, contrary to what is frequently assumed in the literature.

Keywords: Labour force female participation; dynamic probit model state dependence heterogeneity; GHK simulator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Published in Applied Economics, 2016, 48 (30), pp.2807-2821. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2015.1130787⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01338642

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1130787

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