Projecting female labor supply: The relevance of social norm change

The relevance of labor supply research for long-term labor market policy is rather low. This article is an attempt to improve on this situation in the case of female labor force participation. It focuses on labor supply decisions under fundamental uncertainty, that is, imperfect ability to cope with imperfect information. In such a framework, it is rational to resort to behavioral rules in the form of social norms offered by reference groups. Focusing on a simple model for forecasting purposes, the framework is operationalized by means of logit analysis of the labor supply of a number of Dutch female birth cohorts