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by nandemo 5023 days ago
The technical term for the baby boom thing is demographic window.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_window

E.g., Brazil is in the demographic window now, and labour participation has recently peaked. Most Western European countries are past that window, as is the US. If they have an uptick in labour participation, I'd guess it's due to immigration.

Another factor is simply the country's economic development stage. In poor countries, lots of people are working on subsistence or otherwise low-tech agriculture so they cannot retire early.

Not clear why you think 76% for female labour participation is infeasible. They have to work.

Some speculation: as for men's rate decline, I'd guess it's mostly due to women's rate being on the rise (in the long run)? Men have to work less if their wives are working. And in the US, you'd probably want to look at the incarceration rates too.
1 comments
lkrubner 5023 days ago
"Not clear why you think 76% for female labour participation is infeasible. They have to work."

How is this coherent? If they have to work then why isn't the rate 100%? If you agree that 24% are not working, then you admit that there might be forces at work that could keep 20% or 30% or 40% or 50% from not working. The sentence "They have to work" could only be justified if the participation rate was 100%

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nandemo 5023 days ago
> The sentence "They have to work" could only be justified if the participation rate was 100%

Seriously? It could mean "many of those 76% have to work so that they won't starve" since, as I said, a lot of them are working on subsistence agriculture. As opposed to a lot of those 58% of women in US, who could stop working and still not starve (for instance, see Japan's figures).

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lkrubner 5023 days ago
Why is it 76% and not 77%? And why not 75%? What about 79%? Do you have the slightest bit of evidence that exactly 76% of the women need to work, but not 77% or 78% of the women? You can not justify the statement "They have to work" unless 100% of them are working. (Or you could take the alternate route and simply define working as necessary, which is how some economists will occasionally treat the phrase "at the margin". But at that point, you are not saying much, other than "76% of the women need to work because that is how I have defined the word 'need' in my model.")
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nandemo 5023 days ago
Look, I don't have to "justify" anything. My initial comment was intended to add to yours, not to argue about a minor point or quibble about the meaning of simple natural language sentences such as "they have to work". I didn't assert or tried to prove that 76% is correct, I wondered why you thought 76% is implausible, as it seems totally plausible to me, that's all.

> Do you have the slightest bit of evidence that exactly 76% of the women need to work,

I never said that.

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