Cultural Differences in Labor Force Participation among Married Women
Cultural Differences in Labor Force Participation among Married Women
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已婚妇女劳动力参与的文化差异
DOI：
10.1177/000271620056800113
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发表时间：
1985
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
C. Reimers
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. Reimers
通过对已婚妇女劳动力供给的种族差异的分析，可以说明收入分配和种族在经济行为中的作用。除了女性头衔和工资的差异外，妻子劳动力供应的差异是美国种族和民族之间家庭收入差异的主要来源(见我1984年的文章)。此外，种族亚文化之间的差异对妻子劳动力供应的影响可能比对许多其他类型的经济行为的影响更大。族裔群体的区别在于，除其他外，他们对家庭中的男女角色和妻子和母亲在外工作的看法，以及对儿童、家庭规模、家庭组成和妇女教育的重视。这些“文化”差异可能会导致效用功能的系统性差异，从而导致不同种族或出生群体中面临相同限制或机会集的女性行为的系统性差异。毫无疑问，这种效用函数的文化差异是由经济和其他环境在历史上形成的，它们的演变速度慢于经济条件。因此，第一代移民在态度上的种族差异大概比他们在美国出生的后代更明显。这些文化态度可能会对妻子的劳动力供应产生直接和间接的影响。它们直接影响具有相同教育程度、子女数量等的妇女在家庭和市场工作之间的时间分配，还影响关于教育、生育和其他选择的决定，这些决定反过来又影响市场工作机会和家庭时间的价值，从而间接影响劳动力参与。几乎所有关于女性劳动力供应中黑人和白人差异的研究都发现，即使在调整了年龄、子女、教育、地点、其他家庭收入和工资等衡量变量的差异后，黑人妻子的劳动力参与率(LFPR)也高于白人。(有关结果的摘要，请参阅Mark Killingsworth，1983，第122、195、202、404页；和Phyllis Wallace，1982，ch。2.)人们提出了几种解释，比如黑人婚姻更不稳定，他们的大家庭，黑人丈夫工资更低，工作更不稳定--但没有一个被证明是令人满意的。看来，黑人妻子较高的劳动力参与率在很大程度上是一种文化差异，植根于美国黑人的历史经验，不能仅用目前的条件来解释。还没有人像本文所做的那样，试图衡量和解释其他种族和出生人口群体之间妻子劳动力供应的差异。如表1所示，这些差异很大，族裔和原籍群体之间的年度LFPR的差异大于劳动力的年度工作小时数的差异。劳动力群体的年度工作小时数排名与LFPR的排名不同。这表明，不同的参数支配着参与和工作时间的决定，可能是因为群体面临不同的固定工作成本。因此，劳动力供给的这两个方面需要分开分析。在本文中，我重点研究了劳动力参与率的差异。*纽约城市大学经济系、亨特学院和研究生院，邮编：10021。我感谢塞西莉亚·康拉德进行了有益的讨论。PSC-CUNY研究奖帮助支持了这项研究。
Both the distribution of income and the role of ethnicity in economic behavior can be illuminated by an analysis of ethnic differences in married women's labor supply. Differences in wives' labor supply are the main source, beside differences in rates of female headship and wages, of the disparities in family income among racial and ethnic groups in the United States (see my 1984 article). Moreover, differences among ethnic subcultures may affect the labor supply of wives more than they influence many other types of economic behavior. Ethnic groups are distinguished by, among other things, views about male and female roles in the family and about wives and mothers working outside the home, as well as by the value placed on children, family size, household composition, and the education of women. These "cultural" differences may give rise to systematic differences in utility functions that lead to systematic differences in behavior by women in different ethnic or nativity groups who face the same constraints or opportunity set. Such cultural differences in utility functions no doubt are historically shaped by economic as well as other circumstances, and they evolve, but more slowly than the economic conditions. Ethnic differences in attitudes are, therefore, presumably more pronounced in the first generation of immigrants than in their American-born descendants. These cultural attitudes may have both direct and indirect effects on wives' labor supply. They directly affect the allocation of time between home and market work by women with the same education, number of children, etc. They also affect decisions about education, fertility, and other choices which in turn influence the market work opportunities and value of home time, and so indirectly affect labor force participation. Virtually all of the numerous studies of black-white differences in female labor supply have found that black wives have higher labor force participation rates (LFPR) than whites, even after adjusting for differences in measured variables such as age, children, education, location, other family income, and wages. (For a summary of the results, see Mark Killingsworth, 1983, pp. 122, 195, 202, 404; and Phyllis Wallace, 1982, ch. 2.) Several explanations have been suggested-such as blacks' greater marital instability, their extended-family households, black husbands' lower wages and less stable employment-but none has proved satisfactory. It seems that black wives' higher labor force participation is in large part a cultural difference, rooted in the historical experience of blacks in America, and not explainable by current conditions alone. No one has yet attempted to measure and account for the differences in wives' labor supply among the other ethnic and nativity groups, as this paper will do. These differences are large, with the variation in annual LFPRs among ethnic and nativity groups being greater than the variation in annual hours worked for those in the labor force, as shown in Table 1. The ranking of groups in terms of annual hours worked by those in the labor force differs from the ranking in terms of LFPRs. This suggests that different parameters govern the participation and hours worked decisions, perhaps because the groups face different fixed costs of working. These two aspects of labor supply therefore need to be analyzed separately. In this paper I focus on the differences in labor force participation rates. *Department of Economics, Hunter College, and Graduate School of the City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021. I thank Cecilia Conrad for helpful discussions. A PSC-CUNY Research Award helped support this research.