IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16973.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economic Consequences of Being Widowed by War: A Life-Cycle Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Braun, Sebastian Till

    (University of Bayreuth)

  • Stuhler, Jan

    (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Abstract

Despite millions of war widows worldwide, little is known about the economic consequences of being widowed by war. We use life history data from West Germany to show that war widowhood increased women's employment immediately after World War II but led to lower employment rates later in life. War widows, therefore, carried a double burden of employment and childcare while their children were young but left the workforce when their children reached adulthood. We discuss the mechanisms contributing to this counterintuitive life-cycle pattern and examine potential spillovers to the next generation.

Suggested Citation

  • Braun, Sebastian Till & Stuhler, Jan, 2024. "The Economic Consequences of Being Widowed by War: A Life-Cycle Perspective," IZA Discussion Papers 16973, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16973
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16973.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    war widows; labor market careers; female labor force participation; World War II;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-

    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:iza:izadps:dp16973. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.