[nandemo]

> 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).

[lkrubner]

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.")

[nandemo]

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.