Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete-time event-history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are…

The authors use data from the Health and Retirement Study's Earnings Benefit File, which links Health and Retirement Study to Social Security Administration records, to estimate the impact of childhood health on earnings curves between the ages of 25 and 50 years. They also investigate the extent to which diminished educational attainment, earlier…

On April 7, 2011, Jobs for the Future (JFF) Policy Vice President Raymond Uhalde testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies about the success of workforce development projects for youth and adults funded by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the importance of sustaining…

The January employment numbers, released today by the U.S. Department of Labor, present mixed evidence about the state of the labor market. While the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent, payrolls were just better than flat, increasing by only 36,000 jobs last month. Much attention is given to the official unemployment rate, which is certainly…

This paper examines the propensity of highly educated women to exit the labor force at motherhood. We focus on systematic differences across women with various graduate degrees to analyze whether these speak to differences in the capacity to combine children with work over a variety of high-education career paths. Working with a sample of Harvard…

In December 2012, the "U.S. Department of Education Chapter of Blacks In Government (BIG) Report: The Status of the African American Workforce at the U.S. Department of Education" (ED538186) described racial and demographic data by grade levels for Pay Period 11 in 2012 compared to similar data towards the end of the Bush administration.…

American families are experiencing the effects of the "Great Recession." Most of the job losses are accruing to men, so families may find it strategic for wives to enter the labor force, or increase their work hours. We consider this possibility using the May 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey, and compare findings to May 2004 and 2005 data,…

The Latino workforce is increasingly critical to the vitality of the U.S. economy. Despite the importance of Latinos in the labor market, their economic contributions are limited by significant disadvantages. This research report provides an overview of Latino workers in the United States at mid-decade. We provide background information on labor…

Using data from a national survey of 501 Arab American women, this study examines the extent to which family behavior mediates the influence of religion on women's labor force activity. Prior research on families has largely overlooked the role of religion in influencing women's labor force decisions, particularly at different stages of the life…

In October 1999, the British government enacted the Working Families' Tax Credit, which aimed at encouraging work among low-income families with children. This paper uses panel data collected between 1991 and 2001 to evaluate the effect of this reform on single mothers. We find that the reform led to a substantial increase in their employment rate…

The impacts of foreign immigration on population and labor force growth during the 1990s varied widely across U.S. geographic regions, divisions and states. New England was far more dependent than nearly all other regions on the new wave of foreign immigrants to achieve its population growth and labor force growth during the past decade. In fact,…