Many countries around the world are experiencing a significant shift in demographic patterns towards an older population. The age composition of the labor force has also changed dramatically, often accompanied by sharp reductions in the labor force participation rates of older workers. These phenomena in concert pose numerous challenges for the design of public pension programs and labor market...

Children and Women’s Participation Dynamics: Direct and Indirect Effects Children affect the after-birth labor force participation of women in two ways. Directly, the time spent in child-care reduces the labor market effort. Time spent out of the labor market while on maternity leave alters women’s participation experience and indirectly affects subsequent participation behavior. This paper pro...

Goldin argues that the most significant change in labor markets over the past century was the increased participation of women in the labor market. Figure 1 summarizes historical trends in mens' and womens' labor force participation.

During the past half century, the participation of women in the labor force has increased substantially. In 1930, the 10 million working women represented 24 percent of all women and 22 percent of the total work force (table 1). By 1957, the number of female workers had doubled and their labor-force participation rate had increased to 37 percent. In 1982, 48 million women were in the labor forc...