Women's Labor Force Participation During and After Communism: A Case Study of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

This research uses four micro-data sets to examine differences in married women's labour force participation between Communist and post-Communist Czech Republic and Slovakia. Descriptive statistics show that participation has dropped i both regions following the regime change, particularly for young women. To explain this phenomenon, one hypothesis is that own and spouse wage elasticities of participation are the same during and after Communism and the behaviour change results from different offered wages.