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Using 1980–2000 Census data to study the impact of source country characteristics on married adult immigrants' labour supply assimilation profiles, this chapter shows that immigrant women from countries with high female labour supply persistently work more than those from low female supply countries. While both groups of women work less than comparable natives on arrival, women from high female participation countries eventually close the gap with natives entirely, and women from low female labour supply countries eliminate most of it. Men's labour supply is unaffected by source country female participation, suggesting that the findings on women reflect notions of gender roles.

This chapter analyses the interactions between household decisions over labour supplies and commodity demands in a utility maximizing framework. These decisions have been modelled under the assumptions that either male labour supply is freely chosen or the observed male hours of work are exogenously determined so effectively imposing a ration on the household. The chapter demonstrates the importance of the separability assumption in the framework and tests the restrictions implied by separability using data from the UK Family Expenditure Survey. The survey presents not only earnings and hours data but also collects information on commodity expenditures. Research shows that there is an evidence of strong household composition on female labour supply entering both through necessary female leisure time and through necessary commodity expenditures. These effects would typically result in higher levels of participation for females with older children compared to with a household with no children.

Labor force participation rates of college-educated women ages 60 to 64 increased by 20 percent (10 percentage points) between 2000 and 2010. One potential explanation for this change stems from the fact that fewer college-educated women in the more recent cohorts were ever teachers. This occupational shift could affect the length of women’s careers because teaching is a profession where workers are covered by defined benefit pensions and, generally, defined benefit pensions allow workers to retire earlier than Social Security. I provide evidence supporting the hypothesis and show that older college-educated women who worked as teachers do not experience increases in labor force participation as large as their counterparts who never taught.

Black women in recent cohorts aged between 50 and 72 years have lower employment than similar white women, despite having had higher employment when they were middle-aged and younger. Earlier cohorts of older black women also worked more than their white counterparts. Although it is not surprising that white women’s employment should catch up to that of black women given trends in increasing female labor force participation, it is surprising that it should surpass that of black women. This chapter discusses factors that contribute to this differential change over time. Changes in education, marital status, home-ownership, welfare, wealth, and cognition cannot explain this trend, whereas changes in occupation, industry, health, and gross motor functioning may explain some of the trend.

Women’s labor force participation rates have risen dramatically over the past several decades. Much has been made of the increase in the numbers of women with young children now participating in the labor market despite the demands on their time at home. Older women face similar competing demands on their time in the form of care for elderly family members. Due to increasing life expectancy, women now in their 50s and 60s are more likely than ever to have a living parent and are thus more likely to be providing care. We analyze the prevalence of the provision of long-term care for a representative sample of women in their pre-retirement years and look to see how this caregiving affects employment. We find a significant positive trend across cohorts in the need to provide care and a significant effect of caregiving on work, with caregiving reducing the probability of work by just over 8 percent and the number of hours worked by 4 percent. Our cohort analysis points to a growing impact of caregiving over time and suggests that the lack of affordable long-term care options can have a substantial impact on employment rates.