THE CONVERGING MARKET WORK PATTERNS OF MARRIED MOTHERS AND LONE MOTHERS IN CANADA

In 1973, Canadian lone mothers were more likely to work in the market than were married mothers. By the late 1980s, the opposite was true. My principal objectives are to document this trend and to consider how well one can account for it by using those variables commonly included in cross-sectional studies of labor supply. I find that the standard set of conditioning variables can account for only 29 percent of the convergence in the employment rates of married and lone mothers. The remainder of the convergence is attributable to changes in unobservable factors.