Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labor Force Survey this paper examinesthe impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exitfrom the labor force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure topostpone retirement,...

A striking feature of labour supply in South Africa is the phenomenal expansion in the labourforce participation of women from 38 percent in 1995 to 46 percent in 2004. Even so, theirparticipation has been persistently lower than that of men whose participation rates were 58percent and 62...

Census data show that since 1980 low-skill workers in the United States have beenincreasingly employed in the provision of non-tradeable time-intensive services - such asfood preparation and cleaning - that can be broadly thought as substitutes of homeproduction activities. Meanwhile the wage...

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economicsectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on thesubstitutions between market and home production and on the structural transformationbetween agriculture, manufacturing and...

The paper investigates the relationship between work and family life in Britain.Using appropriate statistical techniques we estimate a five-equation model,which includes birth events, union formation, union dissolution, employmentand non-employment events. The model allows for unobserved...

There has been little empirical work evaluating the sensitivity of fertility to financial incentives at the household level. We put forward an identification strategy that relies on the fact that variation of wages induces variation in benefits and tax credits among "comparable households...

We estimate the effect of early child development on maternal labor force participation using data from teacher assessments. Mothers might react to having a poorly developing child by dropping out of the formal labor force in order to spend more time with their child, or they could potentially...

Unlike in many other transition countries, where the gender pay gap has remained stable while female employment rates have reduced, in the case of Belarus women activity rate has been practically unchanged despite an increase in the gender pay gap. This paper investigates why this is the case by...

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions foreconomic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome maybe inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the impositionof a child-labor ban...

Utilizing data from the June Current Population Survey (CPS) Fertility Supplement mergedwith data from other months of the CPS, we describe trends in parents´ employment andleave-taking after birth of a newborn and analyze the extent to which these behaviors areassociated with parental leave...