Why do U.S. female workers rarely work part-time?
Author(s): Alexander Ugarov
Looking for co-authors: No { message_status }
This is an open research idea! Claim (10 points)
Why do relatively few women work part-time in the U.S. (and Canada) if it seems as a natural way to combine child/home care work (which women in the U.S. still do disproportionally) with employment?. This question is inspired by an insightful twitter thread of Alice Evans (King's College London, Yale). The U.S. labor force participation rate for women is comparable to most European countries: 
- Women work full time because they need to preserve health insurance which would be very costly otherwise in the US. Counterargument: Women also work full time in Canada which does not rely on private health insurance.
- Lower taxes in the US incentivize more work (Prescott, 2004). Counterargument: taxes explain less of variation in hours if using a more standard values for the elasticity of labor supply (Alesina, Glaeser and Sacerdote, 2005)
- American at-will labor separation policies and lower safety net create more incentives to invest in goodwill with your employer. Working full time shows that you are a loyal productive worker and increases on-the-job learning.
- Higher returns on education shift the choice in labor-leisure tradeoff towards working more.
- Higher returns on work experience create incentives to work more.
Published: 2023-02-23 14:37:40 PT
Stage: Research Idea
Fields: Macroeconomics, Labor Economics
Research Group(s): Playground
Referee Reports: No referee reports yet. (Add your report)