Determinants of women’s hours worked in Mexico: a pseudopanel approach (2005-2010)

The hours worked by Mexican women depend not only on wages and individual characteristics, but also on factors related to household structure, which generate incentives for women to restrict their hours of paid work. This study uses a pseudo-panel containing five million observations from the National Survey on Occupation and Employment, for 2005-2010. Different age cohorts of the female working population are analysed along with a pseudopanel model that measures the sensitivity of women’s hours worked to wage variations and factors related to household structure, such as the availability of help in the home and the presence of children. It is found that women’s hours worked increase when the household contains another adult woman, but decrease in the presence of children or a male adult.