Cohort Analysis of Recent Trends in Labor Force Participation

The age-period-cohort accounting framework is used to describe labor force participation patterns for the sex-color groups over the interval 1969–1979, using data from the March Current Population Survey. A model with a special type of age-period interaction, in addition to main effects of the three indexing variables, is presented as a means of capturing the transitory period “shocks” which differentially influence participation odds for young and old age groups. Findings show that younger cohorts of nonblack men, nonblack women, and black women have greater “intrinsic” tendencies to participate than older cohorts, while younger cohorts of black men have lesser “intrinsic” tendencies to participate than older cohorts. The results are used to decompose across-time change into a part due to cohort effects and a part due to period effects.