The Social Multiplier and Labor Market Participation of Mothers

Abstract

In France, as in the US, a mother's labor market participation is influenced by the sex composition of her two eldest siblings. This paper shows that it is also affected by the sex composition of the eldest siblings of the other mothers living in the same close neighborhood. Using the sex composition of neighbors' eldest siblings as an instrumental variable, we identify a significant elasticity of own labor market participation to neighbors' participation. We present supportive evidence by comparing the estimates under two regimes for family benefits (pre- and post-1994 reform) and using quarter of birth as an alternative instrument

Peer Effects in Program Participation

“…However, some researchers have pointed out inherent difficulties (Evans, Oates, and Schwab, 1992;Ross, 2009;Currie and Aizer, 2004). To address such concerns, some papers provide tests of the identifying assumptions made in observational studies (Bayer, Ross, and Topa, 2008;Hensvik and Nilsson, 2010) or use instrumental variables (Maurin and Moschion, 2009;Monstand, Propper, and Salvanes, 2011;Rege, Telle, and Votruba, 2009).…”

In Good Company Neighborhood Quality and Female Employment

“…In Labor Economics, empirical studies mainly focus on how neighbors influence individual employment probabilities [Bauer, Fertig and Vorell 2011;Ioannides and Loury 2004] and welfare receipt [Kling, Liebman and Katz 2007]. Studies specifically addressing neighborhood effects on womens' individual labor supply remain scarce, but a few notable examples are available [van Ham and Büchel 2006;Johnson 2014;Maurin and Moschion 2009]. Manski [1993] provides the conventional organizing framework, where there are three neighborhood effects to consider.…”

“…One would need either a source of exogenous variation in neighborhood and peer attributes, which is the strategy of Maurin and Moschion [2009], or to control directly for various types of heterogeneity, as in Weinberg, Reagan and Yankow [2004]. One may also assume that the exogenous effect is zero to enable the identification of the endogenous effect, which is the strategy suggested in Graham and Hahn [2005].…”

“…Apart from the current manuscript, the only other study dedicated to analyzing female labor supply which attempts to recover a credible estimate of peer effects was conducted by Maurin and Moschion [2009]. The authors use an instrumental-variable strategy with data from the French Labor Force Survey to estimate the impact of the neighbors' labor-market participation on a mother's own participation.…”

“…Yet the individual decision of women, especially mothers, to supply labor is most likely influenced by neighborhood characteristics, including the extent of information networks and the state of labor demand, as well as the prevailing social mores on gender roles. Neighborhood and social-interaction effects on labormarket outcomes have thus received pronounced attention in the more recent economic literature (e.g., Bayer, Ross and Topa [2008], Buchinsky, Gotlibovski and Lifshitz [2014], Damm [2014], Dujardin and Goffette-Nagot [2010], and Maurin and Moschion [2009]), as they can possibly explain variations in individual outcomes that cannot be fully accounted for by individual and household characteristics [Graham 2008]. …”