During the past half-century, there has been a trend toward increasing the minimum age a child must reach before entering school in the United States. States have accomplished this by moving the school-entry cutoff date earlier in the school year. The evidence presented in this paper shows that these law changes increased human capital…

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…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

This book grew out of the research of the Conservation of Human Resources Project at Columbia University. It provides an updated version of a book with the same title and by the same author that was published in 1959. The subject is discussed in the following chapters: I. The Work of Women; II. The Women Who Work; III. The Demands and Rewards of…

To correct for sample selection bias problems, the authors present a mathematical model of decision-making and apply it to young women's decisions regarding college attendance or labor force participation. They find that the two decisions are strongly correlated and together affect the estimated rate of return on college education. (Author/RW)

The average workweek of full-time workers declined by 35 percent between 1900 and 1940, but has not changed significnatly since then, and the secular rigidity of the full-time workweek remains. An expanded model which incorporates the effects of growth in education and in the female wage explains the post-1940 secular trend. (Editor/HD)

The statistics are based on a household survey, collected annually, and are related to one year's earnings experience of family heads and unrelated individuals. Data show that after-tax earnings for the 30 million persons surveyed rose in 1973 by 5.8 percent but fell 0.4 percent after adjustment for consumer price increases (real after-tax…

In 1969 there were 30.5 million women workers (38 percent of all workers) 16 years of age and over, which represented an increase of 1.3 million since 1968. About 58 percent of the women workers were married and living with their husbands. Labor force participation was highest among mothers with school-age children only (51 percent) and lowest…

Payroll and progressive income taxes play an enormous role in the American fiscal system. The purpose of this study is to present some econometric evidence on the effects of taxes on married women, a group of growing importance in the American labor force. A testable model of labor supply is developed which permits statistical estimation of a…

Examines two opposing positions of economists about immigration's impacts. Reports empirical analysis of wages and employment effects of recent undocumented aliens and settled migrants on native-born workers. Separate native-born worker estimates are provided for men and women, subdivided by race and Spanish origin. (FMW)

Two essays address the issue of pay equity and present opinions favoring and opposing comparable-worth adjustments. Movement of women out of traditionally female jobs, the limits of "equal pay," fairness of comparable worth and market-based wages, implementation and efficiency of comparable worth system, and alternatives to comparable…

Examines the influence of child-related reductions in past hours worked on current wage rate of married women with children. The study reveals that differences in "intensity" of prior work experience account for half of the sex-related wage gap. (TE)

Only by recognizing that class is not gender neutral can the processes of class formation and reproduction be understood. Class is defined as a process in which human beings take an active part, rather than a structure of categories into which individuals may be inserted. Gender organizes or structures class in many different ways. For example,…

Human capital theory indicates that receipt of on-the-job training is positively related to expectations of future labor force participation. Young women may underestimate their future labor force attachment and therefore underinvest in on-the-job training. (JOW)

In the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark, employment trends have been considerably more favorable than in Germany. A country is considered successful in an employment policy context if unemployment is falling steadily or is low and if employment is increasing steadily or the employment rate has reached a high level.…