TY  - JOUR
AU  - Olivetti, Claudia
TI  - The Female Labor Force and Long-run Development: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19131
PY  - 2013
Y2  - June 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19131
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19131
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19131.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudia Olivetti
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
E-Mail: claudia.olivetti@dartmouth.edu
M1  - published as Claudia Olivetti. "The Female Labor Force and Long-Run Development: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective," in Leah Platt Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo, editors, "Human Capital in History: The American Record" University of Chicago Press (2014)

AB  - This paper provides additional evidence on the U-shaped relationship between the process of economic development and women's labor force participation. The experience of the United States is studied in a comparative perspective relative to a sample of rich economies observed over the period 1890-2005. The analysis confirms the existence of a U-shaped female labor supply function, coming from both cross-country and within country variation. Further analysis of a large cross section of economies observed over the post-WWII period suggests that the timing of a country's transition to a modern path of economic development affects the shape of women's labor supply.
ER  -