ABSTRACT
In Chapter II, upper-bound estimates of married women's labor force participation were generated in a manner that was consistent with the theory behind the traditional U-shape story. The driving force behind the high rates in the colonial period (the beginning of the U) is the inclusion of the wives of self-employed men. Therefore, one could argue that estimates of female labor force participation in later years must also include such women. Upper bound estimates were calculated through an examination of the recorded occupational status of women with self-employed husbands for the years of lowest portion of the Ushape. It was shown that the inclusion of all married women in selfemployed households increases their labor force participation rate to 60.2 percent in 1880, 45.1 percent in 1900, 32.5 percent in 1910, and 21.1 percent in 1940.1
Is such an exhaustive inclusion appropriate? Perhaps not. While it may seem reasonable to assume that nearly 100 percent of farm wives performed farm labor for the market, such may not be the case for other occupations (say, contractors). The goal of this chapter is to provide a detailed examination of the particular occupations held by selfemployed men in order to offer more accurate probabilities of their wives' involvement in family businesses. With these estimates, new adjustments are made to the labor force statistics on married women and implications drawn for the U-shaped pattern of participation over the course of the century.
