In tandem with the economic development in Taiwan, female participation in the labor market has been growing. In 1980, female labor force participation rate in Taiwan was only 39.25% but it increased about 10 percentage points in the following 27 years, rising to 49.44% in 2007. Compared with advanced countries in the OECD, female labor force participation in Taiwan still has a long way to go. This research draws on past patterns in Taiwan and OECD member countries to understand the development of international female labor force participation. The purposes of this study are to understand the trend of female labor force participation in OECD countries and in Taiwan, and to know the impact of the new economy and atypical work on female labor force participation. From this study, it is obvious that internationally female labor force participation has grown from 1980 to 2006. By age groups, it indicates that the highest female labor force participation rate in OECD countries was in the age group of 40-44 while in Taiwan it was in the age group of 25-29. By the level of educational attainment, it brings out that education has improved female labor force participation since the highest female labor force participation rates were in the group of tertiary education in OECD countries, as well as in Taiwan. By sector and occupation, the statistics show that more and more females are employed in the service sector, working as service workers and sales workers. Moreover, the knowledge-based economy and the atypical jobs have lowered the entry barriers of labor market for females and have improved female labor force participation.

How do the experiences of women in the labor market differ from the experiences of men? Do economic crises affect their labor market decisions differently? Economists have investigated the responses of women to specific moments of crisis in Argentina – the country lends itself well to this analysis, as the last three decades of its history have seen both economic growth and financial collapse. With the crisis literature in mind, I investigate trends in female labor force participation rates in Argentina between 1980-2003, finding that while some evidence supports the “added worker effect” hypothesis, more research must be done to understand the relationships between female labor force participation and male and female unemployment.

The first chapter relates the size of the present-day LGBT population to the discovery of gold during the nineteenth century gold rushes. Comparing the surroundings of gold rush counties to other mining counties, we find that there are currently 15% more same-sex couples in former gold rush counties and that residents of these counties have more favorable attitudes toward homosexuality. Gold rush counties were initially isolated, mostly uninhabited and lacked strong formal institutions, which helped shaping pro-LGBT attitudes. Examining channels of persistence, we provide empirical evidence for selective migration and the lack of strong religious institutions. The second chapter examines the impact of gender focused labor legislation on women’s labor force participation and economic empowerment. We rely on historical legislative acts passed by state legislatures and exploit whether or not states passed regulatory laws regulating overall and industry specific employment and work conditions for women, night work laws and labor laws requiring provision of seats for working women. We exploit the fact that not all states enacted these laws as well as the variation in the timing of enactment of such laws. Our results show that women in comparison to men in treated states are more likely to be in the labor force post introduction of night work laws in comparison to control states. We also document the effect of industry-specific labor policies on women’s likelihood to be employed in the affected industry and in higher-wage occupations within the industry of interest. Policy implications of our findings endorse the adoption of labor laws in favor of women to advocate their empowerment through a higher involvement in the labor market and financial independence. The third chapter tests the doctrine of first effective settlement by relating early settlers’ culture to within state variation in gender norms in the United States. In 1973, the cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky postulated that the distinctive traits of early settlers at initial stages of institutional development may be crucial for cultural formation. I capture settlers’ culture using past female labor force participation, women’s suffrage and financial rights at their place of origin. I document the distinctive characteristics of settlers’ populations and provide suggestive evidence in support of the spatial (across locations) and vertical (over time) transmission of gender norms. My results show that women’s labor supply is higher, in both the short and long run, in U.S. counties that historically hosted a larger settler population originating from places with favorable gender attitudes. My findings shed new light on the importance of immigrants’ characteristics and their countries/states of origin for cultural formation in hosting societies.

In this dissertation research, the empirical analyses are developed to investigate the role of different factors on female's fertility decisions as well as female labor force participation. This research contains two major parts related to women: first, the impact of State Children Health Insurance (SCHIP) on female's fertility decision is examined. In 1997, Congress enacted the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to provide matching funds to states to provide health insurance for children who do not qualify for Medicaid. The implementation of SCHIP, however, differs across states. For example, some states provide SCHIP benefits to parents while others do not. Controlling for state and female characteristics, are women in states with more generous SCHIP benefits more likely to have children than are women in states with less generous benefits? After classifying state benefits as "generous" or "not generous" under different criteria, I do not find support that the type of SCHIP matters for future pregnancy decisions. Moreover, the association between pregnancy decisions and SCHIP do not change across ethnic groups, income levels, marital status, etc. Second, using a cross-sectional empirical specification, I examine whether female labor force participation (FLFP) in a cross-section of countries between 1985 and 2005 varies depending upon the religion practiced in these countries. I initially find that FLFP is lower in Muslim countries. However, the association between Islam and FLFP greatly diminishes once other controls are included in the regression, suggesting that Islam might not diminish FLFP as some have argued. Moreover, once these additional controls are included, the association between Islam and FLFP is similar to that between Catholicism and FLFP. Countries where Protestantism is prevalent or where no religion is practiced have higher FLFP. Besides, focusing on FLFP and using a panel data from 1980 to 2005, this study examines whether democratization is associated with subsequent labor force participation rates for women. I consider a panel to exploit the within country variation in political regimes and to employ country fixed effects that can control for cultural factors that influence both women's rights and political outcomes. We find a negative association between democratization (as measured by the Freedom House indices) and FLFP. Democratization appears to lower FLFP. Part of this finding stems from the decline in FLFP in former Communist countries. But the fall of Communism is not a complete explanation. Perhaps authoritarian regimes more generally pushed more people into the labor force to maintain higher output levels even when this was not optimal for individual households.

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The first essay studies the long term trend of internal migration in the United States. Over the last forty years, there has only been a modest change in the overall interstate migration rate in the United States. However, different demographic groups have seen very different patterns of changes. The migration rate for families with two college graduate spouses dropped from 5.66% in 1965-1970 to 2.82% in 2000-2005. As for the families with college-graduate husband, it dropped from 4.05% to 2.15% during the same time frame. Interstate migration rates for other types of families or singles have seen little change. This paper extends Mincer’s family migration model into a search framework and directly estimates the effects of female labor force participation, spousal earnings ratio, correlation of earnings from job offers, and home ownership on the migration propensity by using the Current Population Survey (CPS) data in the period of 1982-2005. Endogeniety issues of these variables are appropriately addressed. According to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis, we find that the increasing female labor force participation rate and earnings ratio of wife to husband are the primary determinants for the decline in the interstate migration rate of families with two college-graduate spouses and families with a college-graduate husband in the 1980s-1990s. The rising home ownership accounts for a large portion of the decrease in the migration rate of highly educated families, in the 1990s-2000s. The second essay studies the impact of changing youth cohort size on the unemployment rate. Although an increase in youth cohort size is often found to exert an upward pressure on the aggregate unemployment rate, it has been provided some empirical evidences and a theoretical model to the contrary. We find that the estimated elasticity of unemployment rate is quite sensitive in a fixed effect model, with the inclusion of year dummies, when there is a strong temporal correlation between the youth cohort size and the unemployment rate. Both the sign and magnitude of the estimates vary significantly when using data from different time periods. We propose an alternative way to control for the fixed effects and obtain consistent estimates across the time periods in the United States. Our results support the conventional wisdom of positive correlation between youth cohort size and aggregate unemployment rate. This positive effect of the youth cohort size is strongest for the youngest workers and gradually diminishes for older workers, which implies that the young and the prime age workers are not perfect substitutes to the employers.

This article looks at the effect of culture on female labor force participation. Proxies of culture used are Globe cultural social practice dimensions, and Hofstede cultural dimensions. This article finds that globe cultural dimensions have a stronger explantory value that Hofstede cultural dimensions. It confirms that gender eglaitarianism is a predictor of female labor force participation. It also suggests that assertiveness and uncertainty avoidance are also predictors of female labor force participation.

This paper looks at macro level data to measure the influence religion has played on female labor force participation (FLFP) rates between 1980 and 2005. It also attempts to find if this influence has changed over time. It then focuses specifically on African and post-communist nations as that is where some of the major religious changes have taken place in the last few decades. There is no clear pattern of an increasing or decreasing influence of religion on FLFP rates. Rather, different religions in different parts of the world affect FLFP in different ways. Finally, this paper looks specifically at Islamic and Catholic nations to see what variables have an effect on rising FLFP rates in those countries.

Female labor force participation rate in Turkey has been consistently lower than the participation rate in many of the similar developing countries. In addition to country specific factors that prevent increased participation of women, the Turkish economy has been passing through a liberalization program since 1980s which also affects the structure of female labor force in many aspects. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the patterns in the position of women in the labor force during 1988 -2008 in Turkey. The period under concern can be identified as one under which the country has largely completed its transformation within the structural reform programs. A major question that is investigated in this thesis is whether the female labor force has been affected differently than men during the period under concern. Employing structural decomposition and the factor content analyses, impacts of changing production patterns and foreign trade on female labor force are examined. Hence, the present study constitutes a basis for studies that aim to develop policy implications for increased female labor force participation in Turkey.

Through quantitative and qualitative methods, this dissertation endeavors to explain why the rate of female labor force participation (FLFP) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the lowest in the world. Using panel data models for fifty-four developing countries over thirty-five years, the first essay suggests that the most likely factor affecting the rate of FLFP negatively in MENA is the institution of patriarchy. Being part of MENA, which is characterized primarily by the institution of patriarchy, is associated with lower than average FLFP. Oil income appears to have a positive effect on FLFP for countries outside MENA but no effect for countries inside MENA. Moreover, Muslim countries outside MENA do not have lower than average FLFP, while Muslim countries in MENA do. Using ten proxies for patriarchy, the second essay quantifies patriarchy in order to compare MENA countries with the rest of the world. Using principle component analysis (PCA), the study measures patriarchy for fifty-nine developing countries over thirty years. The technique creates three main components for patriarchy, namely; the gender gap in education and demography, children’s survival rate, and participation in public spheres. The results show that MENA has the highest level of patriarchy with regard to women’s participation in public spheres, education and demography compared with non MENA countries. The region’s culture and religion seem to be associated with high levels of patriarchy in MENA. The third essay focuses on women’s unpaid work as well as women’s participation in the informal sector in MENA. The results point to a severe undercounting of women’s work. Since women are expected to provide care and produce goods and services for their family at home, women do not participate in the formal labor force in large numbers. Because of the patriarchal culture, patriarchal family laws and labor laws, many women including educated women have to choose to work in the informal sector in MENA. Since women’s unpaid work and their participation in the informal sector are not recorded in labor statistics, the MENA region appears to have a lower rate of FLFP than it does in reality.