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Labor Economics and Macroeconomics: Female Labor Force Participation and Intergenerational Mobility With Jørgen Modalsli, M. Daniele Paserman and Laura Salisbury

Claudia Olivetti, Dartmouth
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
2:30-3:50 PM
Virtual
Abstract:
This paper explores the connection between intergenerational economic mobility and the entry of women into the labor force. We propose a simple statistical model of intergenerational transmission, in which children’s human capital is a function of parental money and time inputs. We derive the father-son (and father-daughter) intergenerational elasticities (IGEs) under two regimes: one in which mothers devote all their time to childrearing, and one in which mothers split their time between market work and childrearing. We find that the impact of mothers’ entry into the labor force on the father-child IGE depends on three key factors: (i) the nature of sorting in the marriage market; (ii) the relative importance of parental time and money in the determination of child’s earnings; and (iii) selection of mothers into labor force participation. We discuss the circumstances under which the entry of mothers into the labor force may have contributed to a decline in the father-son and father-daughter IGEs in Norway.
We empirically and theoretically relate the U-shaped labour supply to the process of structural transformation, and namely the reallocation of labour from female-intensive agriculture into male-intensive manufacturing at early stages of development, and from manufacturing into female-intensive services at later stages. We propose a multisector model of the economy, where the interplay between un-even productivity growth and consumption complementarities across sectors predicts the modernization of agriculture and decline of family farms, the rise in manufacturing and services, and the marketization of home production. The downward portion of the U-shaped pattern is associated with the decline in agricultural employment and the disappearance of the family farm, while the upward portion is driven by the expansion of the service economy, to the detriment of manufacturing, and the marketization of home production.
Building: Off Campus Location
Location: Virtual
Event Type: Workshop / Seminar
Tags: Economics, seminar
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Department of Economics, ISR-Zwerdling Seminar in Labor Economics, Michael Beauregard Seminar in Macroeconomics