Using Spanish Social Security records, we document the channels through which mothers fall onto a lower earnings track, such as shifting into part- time work, accumulating lower experience, or transitioning to lower-paying jobs, and are able to explain 71 percent of the unconditional individual fixed- effects motherhood wage gap. The earnings…

This paper analyzes a puzzling aspect of retirement behavior known as "unretirement." Nearly 50 percent of retirees follow a nontraditional retirement path that involves partial retirement or unretirement, and at least 26 percent of retirees later unretire. I explore two possible explanations: (1) unretirement transitions result from failures in…

Analysis of British married women's employment decisions indicates that differences in wage offers between full- and part-time employment are important determinants of working full-time. Women who work despite low earning power, husbands' high income, or discouraging family circumstances tend to work part-time. (SK)

This paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part-time and full-time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers. The results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full-time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare. The part-time wage effects are…

Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics showed a 4% decrease in the gender wage gap for whites between 1976 and 1985. White men tend to have higher earnings because of more tenure in areas with greater rewards; women tend to have more part-time experience, which has fewer such rewards. (SK)

Alternative models of the choice of retirement state are estimated on a sample of white married males from the Retirement History Survey, 1967-73. Findings suggest that the critical choice for a large number of older workers appears to be that of labor force participation first, with either partial or full-time employment determined conditionally…

Drawing on the Young Men's Cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys, this study examines the long-run effects of teenage labor market experience on subsequent adult wages. The study expands on earlier work by considering the effects of both unemployment and job mobility during the period of transition from school to work. (Author/SSH)