Eleonora Patacchini

Yves Zenou

Claudia Olivetti

We study whether a woman's labor supply as a young adult is shaped by the work behavior of her adolescent peers' mothers. Using detailed information on a sample of U.S. teenagers who are followed over time, we find that labor force participation of high school peers' mothers affects adult women's labor force participation, above and beyond the effect of their own mothers. The analysis suggests that women who were exposed to a larger number of working mothers during adolescence are less likely to feel that work interferes with family responsibilities. This perception, in turn, is important for whether they work when they have children.

Mothers, Peers and Gender-role Identity

National Bureau of Economic Research

Centre for Economic Policy Research (Great Britain)

This paper explores a novel mechanism of gender identity formation. Specifically, we explore how the work behavior of a teenager's own mother, as well as that of her friends' mothers, affect her work decisions in adulthood. The first mechanism is commonly included in economic models. The second, which in social psychology is also emphasized as an important factor in gender identity formation, has so far been overlooked. Accordingly, our key theoretical innovation is how the utility function is modeled. It is assumed that an adult woman's work decisions are influenced by her own mother's choices as well as her friends' mothers' choices when she was a teenager, and the interaction between the two. The empirical salience of this behavioral model is tested using a network model specification together with the longitudinal structure of the AddHealth data set. We find that both intergenerational channels positively affect a woman's work hours in adulthood, but the cross effect is negative, indicating the existence of cultural substitutability. That is, the mother's role model effect is larger the more distant she is (in terms of working hours) from the friends' mothers.

Mothers, Friends and Gender Identity

Mothers, Peers and Gender Identity

Harminder Battu

MacDonald Mwale

Do Oppositional Identities Reduce Employment for Ethnic Minorities?

The aim of this book is to study the links between urban economics and labor economics. Different models of urban labor economic theory are examined in the initial two parts of this book: first urban search-matching models (Part 1) and then urban efficiency wages (Part 2). In Part 3, we apply these models to analyze urban ghettos and their consequences for ethnic minorities in the labor market. Professor Zenou first provides different mechanisms for the so-called spatial mismatch hypothesis, which postulates that housing discrimination introduces a key frictional factor that prevents minorities from improving access to job opportunities by relocating their residences closer to jobs. He then explores social networks, which tend to be affected by spatial factors, as workers who are physically close to jobs can be socially far away from them. Based on these models, the author offers different policies aiming at fighting high unemployment rates experienced by ethnic minorities residing in segregated areas.

Urban Labor Economics

Yves Zenou

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