Factors Influencing the Labor Force Participation of Married Women in the United States

Rewat Thamma-Apiroam

doi:10.5539/ass.v12n3p24

Abstract

<p class="a"><span lang="EN-US">This paper examines the factors that influence the labor force participation of married women in the United States during 1975-2002, using multiple regressions with log specification. The results show that women earnings and life expectancy of women are not satisfactory indicators of whether married women should join the labor force. Nonetheless, there exist strong relationships between the decisions to work and men’s income, unemployment rate, consumer durable goods to GDP ratio, women’s schooling as well as divorce rate. </span></p>

Highlights

What affects the married women’s decision to join the labor force keeps revolving overtime
Sub-groups of married women, separated by the ages of children, are examined individually to observe if there are any difference in statistical significances and coefficients in determining the labor force participation
Unemployment rate is another important factor since the married women would have to work more if the unemployment rate increases to sustain the household income

Summary

Introduction

What affects the married women’s decision to join the labor force keeps revolving overtime. Studying women’s labor supply basically involves the women’s wage rates, husband’s incomes and divorce rate as crucial factors influencing whether or not the women decide to join the labor force. In the past, during the war time, one of the obvious reasons why women including married women went out to work was due to the labor shortage. Women's share of the labor force rose from 12 to 18 million under the pressure of wartime demand. After the 70’s, consumer products, especially durable goods such as washing machine, refrigerator, microwave oven, facilitating household production were increasingly accepted as a significant cause of women’s working. Women schooling, access to public health of women and contraception use of married women are anticipated to play such important roles

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