Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring) 1994
Nakamura, Alice O., and Masao Nakamura. 1994. "Predicting Female Labor Supply: Effects of Children and Recent Work Experience." Journal of Human Resources 29(2):304-327.
This study examines the empirical associations between female labor supply and child status and marital status using 1970 and 1980 U.S. census data and 1971 and 1981 Canadian census data. When the data are used in a purely cross-sectional manner, without controlling for previous labor supply, we find, as others have, that female labor supply is negatively related to the number of children a woman has had. However, this relationship changes when we condition on weeks of work in the previous year.
This study makes use of longitudinal information in the Canadian and U.S. census data that has been largely ignored. The paper also explores certain econometric issues raised by the nature of the empirical results.
The authors are both professors in the Faculty of Business at the University of Alberta. This research was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and in part by the Cornell-National Institute of Dental Health CORSIM modeling project. The authors are particularly indebted to Kathryn Shaw and James R. Walker, and are also grateful for helpful comments on various earlier versions of this paper to Martin Browning, John Cragg, Harriet Orcutt Duleep, William E. Even, Jacob Alex Klerman, Evelyn Lehrer, Arleen Leibowitz, Christopher J. Nicol, and T. Paul Schultz; to participants in a Cornell seminar; and to participants in 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. The data for this article can be obtained beginning in August 1994 through August 1997 from the authors at the Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R6, Canada.
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