Suchergebnisse

Abstract The objective of this study is to examine female labor force participation and its determinants in rural and urban China. The sociological literature has demonstrated that participation tends to increase in urban and industrialized places where women have higher levels of education and fewer children, where more workers are engaged in service pursuits, and where family structure is less traditional. With the use of data on counties and cities (N = 2,377) from the I‐percent sample of the 1982 census of the People's Republic of China, it was found that female labor force participation is likely to rise in areas with increased agricultural employment, educational levels, proportion of female‐headed households, and higher male‐to‐female sex ratios. Both the size of the service sector and the fertility rate had negligible effects on female labor force participation. Although, on average, rural places have slightly higher levels of female labor force participation, when other variables are controlled, urban places have a higher rate of female participation. In addition, the findings suggest that market factors (i.e., education) are more likely to determine the rate of female labor force participation in urban areas; whereas demographic and social factors (i.e., sex ratio and household structure) play a more important role in explaining the female labor force participation in rural counties.

Although, universally, the most visible change in the economic status of women during the second half of the twentieth century has been the increase in their participation in the labor market, the Arab region is still characterized by very low female economic participation.

Between the years 1940 and 1947 the demand for female labor in the United States shifted rapidly. Wages for women rose swiftly during the war, then fell suddenly when industries converted to peacetime production. This paper makes use of household production theory to explore the behavior of different segments of the female labor force as they responded to the radical changes in demand brought by World War II. The analysis suggests that a crucial turning point in the efforts to hire women was reached in the second half of 1943.

Race differences exist in the factors that influence the probability of participation by married women in low-income households. Given a relatively low average level of schooling among the women drawn from the low-income subsample, educational status is not a significant determinant, but experience is a significant positive determinant of the probability of participation among women of both races. The presence of preschool children has a significant, impeding effect on the probability of participation by white women, but is an insignificant factor for black women. Household financial status does not influence the probability of participation by married women from low-income households. Results from a Hausman test suggest that the influence of these variables should be accounted for in the fixed effect rather than as determinants of the demand for leisure. One limitation of the fixed effects model is the assumption of time-invariance of the latent characteristics. Some determinants of labor supply may not remain constant over time, such as the marginal utility of initial wealth. Results from a life cycle model in a setting of uncertainty may provide richer estimates than those reported in this paper.

Despite income growth, fertility decline, and educational expansion, women's labor force participation in rural India dropped precipitously over the last decade. This paper uses nationwide, individual-level data allow to explore whether random reservation of village leadership for women affected their access to suitable job opportunities, demand for participation in the labor force, and income as well as intrahousehold bargaining in the short and medium term. Political empowerment through reservation affected women's but not men's participation in public works, but also women's participation in labor markets, income, and participation in key household decisions, with a lag.

Abstract It is well established that the existence of children in the household reduces female labor force participation. This study seeks to determine if different methods of acquiring children (adoption versus procreation) affect participation decisions. Empirical results indicate that, other things being equal, women with one or more adopted children residing in their household are less likely to participate in the labor force than their nonadoptive counterparts.