Las Esposas Trabajadoras: Examining the Effect of Marriage on Female Labor Force Participation in Latin America

Abstract

This study uses census data (1980-2015) from 15 Latin American countries to examine the effect of marriage on the likelihood of female labor force participation. I use the linear probability model with time fixed effects to estimate the aforementioned effect for women with varying levels of educational attainment, parental statuses, and racial backgrounds. For women between the ages 16 and 65, I find that marriage decreases the likelihood of labor force participation by 2.06 percentage points on average holding all else constant. When considering educational attainment, I find that marriage decreases the likelihood of female labor force participation by 2.10 percentage points for dropouts, by 2.44 percentage points for high school graduates, by 0.58 percentage points for women with some college education, and by 2.44 percentage points for college graduates, respectively. When considering parental status, I find that marriage decreases the likelihood of labor force participation by 2.66 percentage points for women with children and by 1.29 percentage points for women without children. When considering race, my results suggest that women belonging to the racial majority group are less likely to participate in the labor force than are women belonging to racial minority groups, though such trends are speculative given the lack of sufficient racial demographics for the Latin American region. I conclude that the negative correlation between marriage and female labor force participation across demographic groups as indicated by my results provides evidence in support of the marital pure income effect presented by previous studies.