Women's employment exit and reentry: differences among whites, blacks, and Hispanics

Abstract

We investigate the determinants of employment transitions with samples from white, black, and Hispanic women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We argue that one needs to take into consideration both family- and job-related factors to explain women's work patterns and that the ways employment and home context combine to influence transitions may vary by race and ethnicity. We find African–American women, followed by Latinas, leave the work force more quickly than white women. These differences are due more to levels of job-related variables than to distributions of family characteristics across race/ethnic groups. On the other hand, only when we control for job-related variables do we see that African Americans, followed by Hispanic women, return to paid work faster than whites, suggesting that these women reenter employment faster than would be expected given their lower levels of previous job rewards and resources. Separate models of exits and returns by race and ethnicity show somewhat different patterns of family effects across groups, while varying effects of wages and occupational variables indicate different degrees and types of labor market disadvantage for blacks and Latinas.