Working Paper: NBER ID: w22698
Authors: Maria D. Fitzpatrick
Abstract: Labor force participation rates of college-educated women ages 60 to 64 increased by 20 percent (10 percentage points) between 2000 and 2010. One potential explanation for this change stems from the fact that fewer college-educated women in the more recent cohorts were ever teachers. This occupational shift could affect the length of women’s careers because teaching is a profession where workers are covered by defined benefit pensions and, generally, defined benefit pensions allow workers to retire earlier than Social Security. I provide evidence supporting the hypothesis and show that older college-educated women who worked as teachers do not experience increases in labor force participation as large as their counterparts who never taught.
Keywords: labor force participation; college-educated women; teacher pensions; retirement patterns
JEL Codes: H55; J26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| access to defined benefit pensions (J32) | influences retirement decisions of teachers (J26) |
| increase in college graduation rates (I23) | shifts in occupational choices and labor supply behaviors (J29) |
| decrease in the fraction of college-educated women who were ever teachers (A21) | increase in labor force participation among older women (J21) |