IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberhi/0027.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Labor Force Participation of Older Americans in 1900: Further Results

Author

Listed:
  • Robert A. Margo

Abstract

Data from the public use sample of the 1900 census are used to study the proper labor force classification of older male Americans experiencing 6 months or more of unemployment in the previous year ("long-term unemployed"). In terms of their personal characteristics, the long-term unemployed were similar in many respects to persons with a gainful occupation. Because the probability of re-employment, conditional on unemployment, appears to have declined with age, the probability of experiencing long-term unemployment rose as persons aged. Census data are consistent with the view that the older an individual was upon entering the status of long-term unemployment, the greater the likelihood the person would leave the labor force in a short period of time. I conclude, however, that this is insufficient reason to exclude the long-term unemployed from the count of gainful workers in 1900, as has recently been advocated.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert A. Margo, 1991. "The Labor Force Participation of Older Americans in 1900: Further Results," NBER Historical Working Papers 0027, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0027
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/h0027.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flinn, Christopher J & Heckman, James J, 1983. "Are Unemployment and Out of the Labor Force Behaviorally Distinct Labor Force States?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 28-42, January.
    2. Keyssar,Alexander, 1986. "Out of Work," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521297677, January.
    3. Sally Bould, 1980. "Unemployment as a Factor in Early Retirement Decisions," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 123-136, April.
    4. Moen, Jon, 1987. "The Labor of Older Men: A Comment," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(03), pages 761-767, September.
    5. Joseph F. Quinn & Richard V. Burkhauser & Daniel A. Myers, 1990. "Passing the Torch: The Influence of Economic Incentives on Work and Retirement," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number pt, November.
    6. Margo, Robert A., 1990. "The incidence and duration of unemployment : Some long-term comparisons," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 217-220, March.
    7. Thomas S. Coleman, 1989. "Unemployment Behavior: Evidence from the CPS Work Experience Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(1), pages 1-38.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dora L. Costa, 1994. "Health and Labor Force Participation of Older Men, 1900-1991," NBER Working Papers 4929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gardner, John & Gratton, Brian & Moen, Jon, 2018. "Re-estimating the Gainful Employment Rate of Older Men: the United States, 1870 to 1930," MPRA Paper 88729, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Chulhee Lee, 2009. "Technological Changes and Employment of Older Manufacturing Workers in Early Twentieth Century America," NBER Working Papers 14746, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lee, Chulhee, 1999. "Farm Value and Retirement of Farm Owners in Early-Twentieth-Century America," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 387-408, October.
    5. Chen Song & Louis Nguyen, 2003. "The Effect of Hernias on the Labor Force Participation of Union Army Veterans," NBER Chapters, in: Health and Labor Force Participation over the Life Cycle: Evidence from the Past, pages 253-310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002. "Labor supply effects of social insurance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392, Elsevier.
    2. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman, 2000. "Downtime in American Manufacturing Industry: 1870 and 1880," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0048, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    3. Jeremy Atak & Fred Bateman & Robert A. Margo, 2001. "Part-Year Operation in 19th Century American Manufacturing: Evidence from the 1870 and 1880 Censuses," Macroeconomics 0105001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Claudia Goldin, 1994. "Labor Markets in the Twentieth Century," NBER Historical Working Papers 0058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Falk, Armin & Huffman, David B. & Sunde, Uwe, 2006. "Do I Have What It Takes? Equilibrium Search with Type Uncertainty and Non-Participation," IZA Discussion Papers 2531, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Chulhee Lee, 2009. "Technological Changes and Employment of Older Manufacturing Workers in Early Twentieth Century America," NBER Working Papers 14746, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Charles W. Calomiris & Christopher Hanes, 1994. "Historical Macroeconomics and American Macroeconomic History," NBER Working Papers 4935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Chulhee Lee, 2003. "Labor Market Status of Older Males in the United States, 1880-1940," NBER Working Papers 9550, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Lixin Cai, 2015. "The dynamics of low pay employment in Australia," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 36(7), pages 1095-1123, October.
    10. Eichengreen, Barry & Hatton, Tim, 1988. "Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt7bw188gk, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    11. Lechthaler, Wolfgang & Ring, Patrick, 2021. "Labor force participation, job search effort and unemployment insurance in the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 748-778.
    12. Hiedemann, Bridget, 1998. "A Stackelberg model of Social Security acceptance decisions in dual career households," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 263-278, February.
    13. Nachum Sicherman, 1996. "Gender Differences in Departures from a Large Firm," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 49(3), pages 484-505, April.
    14. John Micklewright & Gyula Nagy, 1999. "The Informational Value of Job Search Data and the Dynamics of Search Behaviour: Evidence from Hungary," Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market 9901, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    15. Joshua L. Rosenbloom, 1999. "The Challenges of Economic Maturity: New England, 1880 - 1940," NBER Historical Working Papers 0113, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Joseph F. Quinn & Kevin Cahill & Richard V. Burkhauser & Robert Weathers, 1998. "The Microeconomics of the Retirement Decision in the United States," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 400, Boston College Department of Economics.
    17. Susan B. Carter & Richard Sutch, 1995. "Myth of the Industrial Scrap Heap: A Revisionist View of Turn-of-the- Century American Retirement," NBER Historical Working Papers 0073, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Lars Kunze & Nicolai Suppa, 2014. "Bowling Alone or Bowling at All? The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation," Ruhr Economic Papers 0510, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    19. Schoefer, Benjamin & Mui, Preston, 2019. "Reservation Raises: The Aggregate Labor Supply Curve at the Extensive Margin," CEPR Discussion Papers 14209, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Geeta G. Kingdon & John B. Knight, 2000. "Are searching and non-searching unemployment distinct states when unemployment is high? The case of South Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2000-02, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0027. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.