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Title: Recent Behavior of the 'Full-Time' Workweek in the U.S.
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Kniesner, Thomas J. |
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Recent Behavior of the 'Full-Time' Workweek in the U.S. Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1974 Cohort(s): Older Men Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Behavior; Earnings, Wives; Household Models; Job Search; Labor Supply; Life Cycle Research; Schooling; Transfers, Wealth; Work Hours/Schedule Regression estimates of the postwar secular labor supply function for full-time workers produce a coefficient for the real wage rate variable that is not statistically different from zero. Past explanations for this phenomenon are shown to be unsupported empirically, including the recently developed life-cycle labor supply model. This dissertation is an attempt to uncover the basic economic structure which is responsible, in part, for the time-series/cross-section conflict. A two-person model of the household is considered. If the nonmarket time of the husband and the nonmarket time of the wife are gross complements, then recent relative increases in the female wage rate have worked against a decline in male hours of work. Considered also is the effect of past investment in schooling. In so much as greater schooling represents a transfer of wealth from nonhuman to human wealth, postwar relative increases in male years of schooling should also have a positive effect on the full-time workweek. The female wage rate has a small positive effect on male hours of work with an elasticity to the range of .02 to .12. Schooling has a much more substantial effect; an additional year of schooling is associated with a workweek longer by approximately one-half to three-fourths of an hour. When the female wage rate and male years of schooling are included as explanatory variables in an analysis of labor supply, the predicted postwar secular movement in full-time hours of work is positive and approximately 75 per cent of the actual increase. When these two factors are held constant, the effect of secular changes in the male wage rate on full-time hours of work is statistically less than zero and approximately equal in both the prewar and postwar periods. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kniesner, Thomas J. Recent Behavior of the 'Full-Time' Workweek in the U.S. Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1974. |