Journal article
Understanding the Rising Trend in Female Labour Force Participation
Nicolas Herault, Guyonne Kalb
Fiscal Studies | Wiley | Published : 2022
Abstract
Female labour force participation has increased tremendously since World War II in developed countries. Prior research provides piecemeal evidence identifying some drivers of change but largely fails to present a consistent story. Using a rare combination of data and modelling capacity available in Australia, we develop a new decomposition approach to explain rising female labour force participation since the mid-1990s. The approach allows us to identify the role of tax and transfer policy reforms as well as three other factors that have been shown to matter by earlier studies: (i) changes in real wages; (ii) population composition changes; and (iii) changes in labour supply preference param..
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Awarded by University of Sydney
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (CE140100027). Guyonne Kalb is a Chief Investigator and Nicolas Herault is a Research Fellow at this Centre. The Life Course Centre (LCC) is administered by the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, with nodes at the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney. We thank the Victoria University ofWellington for its financial support, and Norman Gemmell and John Creedy for involving us in their workshops on microsimulation and tax policy. For helpful discussions and comments, we thank Renaud Coulomb, Stephen Jenkins, Robin Jessen, Todd Morris, Jordy Meekes, two anonymous referees, the editor and audiences at the `Modelling tax policy and compliance' workshop in Exeter, and at the Melbourne Institute.