Question

Pick one of these and answer it.   (If you pick both, no points for you!)

1. (10 points) Make a graph to show the trends in Labor Force Participation rate for Males and for Females in the U.S. since 1960. (It doesn’t have to be exact, just the basic idea and some reasonably close numbers.) Give one reason for the trend in Male LFRP and one reason for the trend in Female LFRP

2. (10 points)   Explain the theory of why specific training is paid for by the firm instead of the worker.

Answer 1

Answer.1.

There was an increase in participation among women and that was the driving force behind the rise in the overall participation rate during the latter half of the 20th century. Although the labor force participation of women aged 25 to 54 years grew steadily over this period, the pace of the increase varied. The largest increase in women’s labor force participation occurred in the 1970s which were 13.9 percentage points, followed by the 1980s where it was 10 percentage points. During most of the 1990s, the participation rate for women aged 25 to 54 years continued to rise, peaking at 76.8 percent in 1999 but, in the years soon after, the rate flattened out. By 2005, the labor force participation rate of women aged 25 to 54 years receded slightly, to 75.3 percent. From 1972 until the late 1990s, labor force participation increased for all the race and ethnic groups, but since 1999, the rates have declined. In earlier generations, full-time homemaking was considered the norm for mothers, but, apparently, the current generation views labor force participation as playing an integral role in mothers’ lives.
The reasons for the changes in labor force participation among women:
a)The presence and the age of children, apparently some highly educated professional women dropped out labor force to care for their young children.

Males:
A significant development in the labor force over the past 50 years has been the steady decline in labor force participation among men aged 25 to 54 years. After peaking at 97.4 percent in the mid-1950s, the participation rate for the men has fallen steadily, reaching a low of 90.5 percent in2005. Dropping by an average of 0.8 percentage point each decade between 1950 and 1990, the labor force participation rate for men aged 25 to 54 years has declined much more since the 1990s. For example, between 1990 and 2000 the rate fell by 1.8 percentage points, and since 2000 it has dropped by 1.1 percentage points.
Causes for changes in male labor force participation rate:
a)Educational attainment level and the types of jobs available to the less educated are less desirable.
b)Access to social security benefits.

In the given figure, this is the representation of us labor force participation rate since 1950

Blue represents men, grey represents women and black represents total.the horizontal axis depicts years and the range here is 6 years.