Life-Cycle Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications

Claudia Goldin

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: The seven-fold increase, since 1920, in the labor force participation rate of married women was not accompanied by a substantial increase in average work experience among employed married women. Two data sets giving life-cycle labor-force histories for cohorts of women born from the 1880s to 1910s indicate considerable (unconditional) heterogeneity in labor-force participation. Employed married women had substantial attachment to their jobs; increased participation brought in women with little prior work experience. Average work experience among cross sections of employed married women increased from 9.1 to 10.5 years over the 1930-50 period. Implications for "wage discrimination" are discussed.

Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Published in Journal of Labor Economics

Downloads: (external link)
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2656816/Goldin_LifeCycle.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Life-Cycle Labor Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications (1983)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:2656816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office for Scholarly Communication ().