| Abstract: | This article presents an empirical examination of female attachment to the labor market. An econometric model of the discouragement
process is built to determine how strongly women exhibit the inclination to remain labor force participants over the course
of the business cycle. The estimated results imply that women, as a group, have a stronger response to changes in short-run
cyclical fluctuations and therefore will sever their attachment to the labor force significantly sooner than their male counterparts.
However, when the analysis is broken down by race, minority females are discovered to demonstrate only a modest response to
short-run fluctuations and a very pronounced long-run sensitivity to cyclical swings. Thus, the results suggest that while
females as a whole do not exhibit the same degree of labor force attachment as males, minority females respond in a manner
similar to that of male workers. Such a conclusion is in agreement with the growing literature on the labor market behavior
of minority females who are increasingly playing the same economic role in society as men. |
