Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring) 1994

Dooley, Martin D. 1994. "The Converging Market Work Patterns of Married Mothers and Lone Mothers in Canada." Journal of Human Resources 29(2): 600-620.

In 1973, Canadian lone mothers were more likely to work in the market than were married mothers. By the late 1980s, the opposite was true. My principal objectives are to document this trend and to consider how well one can account for it by using those variables commonly included in cross-sectional studies of labor supply. I find that the standard set of conditioning variables can account for only 29 percent of the convergence in the employment rates of married and lone mothers. The remainder of the convergence is attributable to changes in unobservable factors.

The author is a professor of economics at McMaster University. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Donner Foundation February 1991 Workshop and December 1991 Conference on the Economic Well-Being of Women and Children, both held at the University of Minnesota Industrial Relations Center. he gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the excellent research assistance of Irena Winkowska Thomas, and the helpful comments of Robert Moffitt and of Douglas Allen, Dwayne Benjamin, Rebecca Blank, Sheelah Dunn Dooley, Gilles Seguin, an anonymous referee and participants in workshops at the University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, Universite Laval and McMaster University. The data used in this study are from the Economic Family files of the Survey of Consumer Finances for the income years 1973, 1979, and 1988. All computations on these micro data were done by the author.