The Changing Impact of Marriage and Children on Women’s Labour Force Participation’, Monthly Labor Review 132(2

Abstract: Cohany and Sok recently reported that the labor force participation rate of married women with children, and especially married women with very young children, declined between 1997 and 2005. In contrast, recent work by Boushey showed that the negative impact of children on work by women age 25-44 declined, rather than increased, in the two decades between 1984 and 2004. In this paper, I re-examine the effects of marriage and children on women’s labor force participation rates between 1984 and 2004. I show that the presence of children has had a declining negative impact on work for single women, but an increasing negative impact for married women. Both of these changes occurred primarily in the 1993-2000 period and have been maintained through 2004, but not at the 1993-2000 rate of increase. Research that overlooks this differential effect of children by marital status draws an incorrect conclusion about the child penalty on women’s labor force participation.