Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

A Continuous-Time Stochastic Model Of Job Mobility: A Comparison Of Male-Femals Hazard Rates Of Young Workers, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

This study examines male and female hazard rates in the periods 1968-1971 and 1979-1982 using data for young workers from the various samples of the National Longitudinal Surveys. Contrary to a number of previous micro-data studies, I demonstrate that for the period 1968-1971 female workers quit their initial full-time jobs at substantially higher rates than male workers. Moreover, while male hazard rates show a monotonic decline, female rates show a nonmonotonic u-shaped pattern, which I attribute to a "birth effect" -- young women leaving the labor force to have children.

For the period 1979-1982, however, young women had become almost …