Previous structural models of job search behavior have been based upon the reservation wage property. This article provides estimates of a more general search model that nests models with the reservation wage property. The estimates lead to rejection of the reservation wage property. The model includes hours of work in the utility function, but other nonwage job characteristics can be included as well. An experiment based on the estimated parameters indicates that a significant proportion of job offers would be mistakenly predicted to be accepted or rejected under the restrictions implied by the reservation wage property.

This paper analyzes changes in child-care arrangements of a sample of children from the Youth Cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys over the first three years of life. The analysis indicates that turnover in child-care arrangements is surprisingly low among this sample and is more common among families of higher socioeconomic status. Child-care turnover is positively correlated with mothers' employment turnover, but is not correlated with changes in mothers' marital status or additional births. Turnover in child-care arrangements is highly correlated over time, due mainly to the effects of observed variables and unobserved characteristics of the mothers.