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The study is an informative presentation of both qualitative and quantitative values observable in Japan today. By utilizing two uniquely distinct fields of study, I hope to gain greater context of Japan’s economy and its contemporary challenges. With close focus on ethnographical studies, I hope to derive potential relationships and develop further context for quantitative results highlighted in previously published economic studies. Ethnography provides an intimate look into specific groups, culture or subcultures in Japan. With emphasis on close observations, interviews, and field notes, empirical studies like that of many ethnography papers provides an intimate scope into the lives of Japanese people. Detailed publications of Japanese people and their daily lives should be valued with equal relevance to that of quantitative results. Moreover, in response to the stagnancy and demographic challenges highlighted by policy makers and political parties, I believe the value of ethnographical publications will continue to grow. Japan struggled to develop effective policies to combat issues of falling birthrates, an aging population and shortages in labor.

This study focuses on the female labor force participation rate (LFPR). Cross-country fixed effect analysis of fifty-six countries shows that female LFPR increases with income and education level. Moreover, average schooling years for males is a good fit for female LFPR especially in the low income countries with low education level. Average schooling years for females is a good fit for female LFPR especially in the high income countries with high education level. Higher female tertiary enrollment ratio is significant for higher female LFPR. On the other hand, Turkey has a lower level of female LFPR than the predicted level. Low female education explains the lower female LFPR of Turkey than the countries with similar income level. However, female LFPR has a declining trend in time even if income and education level improves. Institutional background of Turkey indicates the negative impact of urbanization on participation rates. However, under different growth and education scenarios, Turkey can reach higher levels until 2030. Employment policies especially focused on higher education is essential to reach the targets.

The first oral contraceptive was introduced in the United States during the 1960s, and, subsequently, there was an increase in women’s labor force participation rates. Although the economic role of oral contraceptives is still highly debated by scholars, previous studies have found that the pill had a statistically significant impact on women’s labor force participation rates. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, I will analyze how hours worked, hourly wages, weekly earnings and occupations for women were affected by oral contraceptives. By controlling for various governing statutes that affected the availability of the use and distribution of oral contraceptives in different states, I am able to provide evidence highlighting the extent of the pill’s significance. I find that early legal access (ELA) to oral contraceptives that resulted from residential states legalizing abortion before others positively and significantly affects women’s hours worked, hourly wages, weekly earnings and whether or not women entered into professional occupations.

The scope of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of pension reform on the financial incentives to retire for private sector workers in Austria. How do financial incentives embedded in the Austrian pension system affect individual retirement behavior? Was pension reform effective in changing these financial incentives in order to affect retirement behavior? How would future reform scenarios impact retirement behavior? Micro-estimating the impact of financial incentive measures on the probability of retirement shows that the behavioral response to financial incentives in Austria is relatively large in international comparison. Simulations demonstrate that pension reform was ineffective in providing incentives for delayed retirement. However, there are future reform scenarios that would have a huge impact on retirement behavior by altering the financial incentives.

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.

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