While women's labor force participation rates (LFPRs) in the United States stalled over the last quarter‐century, European countries exhibited a variety of trajectories. We draw on demographic and gender theories of women's life course to understand changes in women's LFPR during their prime child‐rearing years. We build expectations about how aggregate trends may be driven by shifts in the prevalence of key demographic events such as child‐rearing (i.e., compositional) versus shifts in the association of these events with women's LFP (i.e., behavioral). We use data from the European Union Labour Force Surveys and the US Current Population Survey in Kitagawa–Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition models to decompose trends in women's LFPR from 1996 to 2016 across 18 countries by educational attainment, partnership status, and parental status for women aged 20–44. Compositional and behavioral shifts positively contribute to higher LFPR in most countries, but lower rates in several others. Behavioral change is not widely shared across groups of women. Partnered mothers without college degrees are the main contributors to behavioral change and show the greatest variability across countries. We suggest greater research attention to this “missing middle,” as their LFP is key to understanding change during this period.

中文翻译：

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停滞的革命？1996-2016年欧洲和美国儿童期妇女劳动力参与的变化

尽管美国女性劳动力参与率（LFPR）在过去的25个世纪中一直处于停滞状态，但欧洲国家却呈现出各种各样的轨迹。我们借鉴了妇女生命历程的人口统计学和性别理论，以了解妇女在生育高峰期的LFPR的变化。我们期望通过人口增长等主要人口事件发生率的变化（如儿童抚养（即构成））与这些事件与女性LFP关联的变化（即行为）的变化来驱动总体趋势。我们使用欧洲劳工调查和美国在北川-布莱德-瓦哈卡分解模型中的当前人口调查数据，通过教育程度，伙伴关系状况，1996年至2016年18个国家的女性LFPR趋势分解，和20-44岁女性的父母身份。在大多数国家，组成和行为上的改变积极地促进了低收入储蓄率的提高，但在其他一些国家，其低利率的贡献率却很高。行为改变并未在女性群体中广泛分享。没有大学学位的伴侣母亲是行为改变的主要因素，并且在各国之间表现出最大的变异性。我们建议对此“缺失的中间点”进行更多的研究，因为它们的LFP是了解此期间变化的关键。