Further comment on V. K. Oppenheimer’s “The Life-Cycle Squeeze: The Interaction of Men’s Occupational and Family Life Cycles”

Abstract

Oppenheimer's paper Life-Cycle Squeeze: The Interaction of Men's Occupational and Family Life Cycles in the May 1974 issue of Demography deserves comment. She finds that, depending on their occupation, men's earnings peak at different ages. Relating this finding to the pattern of family growth over the family life cycle, she argues that the earnings of many husbands, particularly those in low status occupations, level off or decline before the child-rearing expenses of their families have peaked. Hence, she infers, there is in these families a growing gap between child-rearing expenses and the husband-father's income. This gap, she concludes, is surely an important determinant of wives' labor force participation, especially when they have children of high school or college age. She believes this argument helps account for the relatively high labor force participation rate of wive.s in their forties. In her effort to ascertain the covariation of income and expense over the family life cycle, Oppenheimer used 1960 cross-sectional data as an approximation of cohort data. In respect to the time pattern of men's earnings, this approximation is particularly questionable. The various birth cohorts in this cross-sectional analysis are of different size, and they have obtained increasing amounts of education. Both factors influence the starting level of income and the subsequent rate and pattern of income change. Carter and Glick (1970, p. 206), therefore, properly caution against an uncritical interpretation of the age pattern of median income for MSP [married spouse-present] men in 1960 as being typical of changes in relative financial status throughout the marital cycle. Although there seems to be less reason to question the approximation of family life-cycle variation with respect to the presence and age of children, it would be desirable to assemble what cohort data are available: to check this point to some extent. But whether cohort or cross-sectional data are used, the meaning of information on the presence and age of children is ambiguous in an important respect. The older the children, so long as they are dependent, the more expensive they are. Other things equal, this tends to motivate mothers to earn money. However, the older the children, the les,s child care they need. Other things equal, this tends to facilitate mothers' labor force participation. The problem, then, is how to identify the separate effects of these two determinants of the labor force participation of wives. The solution requires different measures of child-care expense and maternal child-care responsibility. Ideally, neither of these measures should consist of the data on the presence and age of children. Since, however, it would probably be difficult to measure maternal child-care responsibility without such data, it would be practical to use them but to, measure child-rearing expense differently. Other