Mobility of Married Women Non-Parametric Analysis of Labour Force Transitions in Spain

This paper analyses the dynamics of wives’ labour force participation in Spain during the late 1980s from a non-parametric descriptive perspective. This research is motivated by two basic facts: One, there is evidence that female labour supply behaviour in Spain is changing since the late 1980s. Two, while the analysis of participation stocks is covered in the literature, there is no published research on mobility or flows. In the first part of this paper there is a description of the three-monts’ transition rates over twowaves. The underlying assumption is the First Order Markov Hypothesis. In the second part, the Markov assumption is questioned. This is done by carrying out an analysis of survival over 7 waves in which re-entries are ignored. Moreover, there is also an analysis of mobility contingent on past labour market state, which includes re-entries in the analysis. This allows me to study the likelihood of relapsing in a particular state, or the likelihood of surviving contingent on past labour market states. The results are interesting because they reveal features of female labour market behaviour unknown to date. Acknowledgments I thank John Micklewright for his advise, especially during the first stage of this research. I also thank Alfonso Alba-Ramírez, John Ermisch, Siv Gustafsson and Robert Waldmann for their interesting comments. Finally, I thank IGIER and the European University Institute for providing me the best working conditions. All errors are mine. Address for correspondence IGIER. Via Salasco 5, 20136 Milano, Italy. Phone: +39-2-5836 33 23/01 Fax: +39-2-5836 3302 Email: [email protected] or [email protected]