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  • Title: Female labor force behavior and fertility in the United States.
    Author: Lehrer E, Nerlove M.
    Journal: Annu Rev Sociol; 1986; 12():181-204. PubMed ID: 12314445.
    Abstract:
    This article critically reviews the literature on fertility and female labor force behavior in the US, with particular emphasis on recent quantitative research by economists, demographers, and sociologists. It examines the empirical evidence regarding the influence on fertility and female employment of certain key variables, i.e., the value of female time, husband's income, and relative economic status; addresses the issue of whether there is direct causality between fertility and female labor supply; reviews simultaneous equations models and a new approach to the study of causality; discusses decisionmaking models; considers factors that may mediate the fertility-labor nexus, including child care arrangements, husband's income, wife's education, and the convenience of employment; and concludes with consideration of changes over time in the association between fertility and female employment. Economic theory suggests that an increase in the opportunity cost of children should be associated with a decrease in family size. For the US, the fact that the mother's education and other measures of the value of female time have a negative impact on fertility has been interpreted in this was and confirmed with many bodies of data. Most studies find also that indicators of the value of female time affect employment positively. Coefficients associated with measures of husband's income on female employment. In sum, the evidence suggests that at least part of the negative relationship between fertility and female employment may be traced to the fact that that these variables are influenced in opposite directions by changes in the value of female time and relative economic status. Whether changes in husband's income contribute to the negative association is less clear at this time. In 1950, the labor force participation rate for married women with children under 6 years of age was 11.9%; it was 28.3% for those with children 6-17 years of age. By 1960, the figures had risen respectively to 18.6% and 39.0% and by 1983 to 49.9% and 63.8%. The traditional pattern of post-school work, interruption of employment; and possibly a subsequent return to the labor force has been eroding, with women remaining more closely attached to the labor force during the childrearing years. If, as is likely, this trend continues, one may expect a move toward convergence in the male and female occupational distributions and a narrowing in the wage differential between the sexes. The implications that women's increased commitment to market activities may have in terms of income distribution among families and the quantity and quality of time spent on child care are less clear at the present time and require close attention. As Ryder (1980) documents, changes in the timing of births have come to be the primary driving force behind movements of period fertility in the US.
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