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The Distribution of Lifetime Labor Force Participation of Married Women: Reply to Mincer and Ofek

In our paper, we outline a simple dynamic model of the labor force participation of married women. We estimate that the population distribution of participation probabilities that arises from unobservable factors is U shaped with most but not all of the density in the tails of the distribution. (Indeed, a severe criticism that can be lodged against our statistical model is that the beta density we employ does not permit a concentration of probability at either zero or one.) Mincer and Ofek question this finding. They present evidence on lifetime labor supply obtained from retrospective questions available in the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS). Superficially, their analysis appears to refute our analysis. In our view, it does not. There are several key points. (1) Our estimates are made conditional on controlling for observed sources of heterogeneity, while the Mincer and Ofek estimates ignore any control for the set of life-cycle variables, such as children, income, and local labor market variables, that change over the course of the life-cycle and result in labor force entry and exit. Thus Mincer and Ofek estimate the unconditional distribution of lifetime population participation probabilities, while we estimate the conditional distribution of participation probabilities. (2) We attempt to describe the labor force experience of married women. The Mincer and Ofek estimates are based on the lifetime work experience of currently married women, including work experience in the postschool, premarriage years in which labor force participation rates are known to be high. We sought to estimate the participation patterns of married women while they are married. There are reasons, well known in the literature, why the labor supply behavior of married women is different from that of single women. (3) Mincer and Ofek note several potentially important defects in the