Female Labor Force Participation: A Cross-Sectional Analysis: Case: Venezuela in the 1990's

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the labor force participation of Venezuelan women during the 1990s based on the theory of allocation of time between home and market work. The available data for the last years of 1990s provides information to properly identify the formal and informal sector of the labor market. The conclusion that must be drawn from this book is that one cannot generalize about the women?s labor force participation just by studying the behavior of women in the aggregate. The relative importance of motivating factors depends strongly on the specific sub-sample (married, single, or head of household) to which a woman belongs, a fact unrevealed by previous empirical work. Based on the empirical results from the application of the Multinomial Logit Model, women can be grouped into working for pay (formal sector), self-employed and/or workers in family businesses (informal sector), and non-participation in the labor market. This information will make a valuable contribution to policy-makers who seek to encourage the important economic contribution of women to this previously under-studied labor market.