Determinants of female labor-force participation.

Abstract

As is well known, the labor-force participation rate of women was in a continuous decline (for more than a half century) until 1975. Needless to say, this fact is attributable to the decline in the farm population. In other words, this gradual decline has been associated with industrialization and urbanization. However, as is also well known, the female labor-force participation rate made a complete turn around between 1976 and 1978, rising by as much as 1.6 percentage points to reach 47.4 percent over these three years (see Table 3 below for recent statistics).