In this work I enquire into the empirical validity and some implications of Yoram Ben-Porath's insights. Section II answers the question, Are the shapes and magnitudes of growth in wage profiles largely attributable to human capital investments? Section III tests the proposition that over the working age capacity wages decline before observed wages do. Implied timing of labor supply provides the test. In Section IV implications are drawn from Ben-Porath's model for interpersonal differences and for the correlation between schooling and training.

This paper is a survey of analyses of women's labor force growth in 12 industrialized countries, originally presented at a conference in Sussex, England, in June 1983. The main focus of the conference papers and of the current survey is on growth of the labor force of married women in the years 1960-80. Trends in fertility, wages, and family instability also receive attention as related developments. Married women's labor force growth is observed in all countries, except for the USSR after 1970, where labor force rates of women reached the level of men. Growth rates differ among countries. They apparently respond to growth in real wages and to growth in education, but response elasticities differ among countries. Estimates of these elasticities contained in the country papers were helpful in predicting the trends. Other findings include ubiquitous declines in fertility and growth of divorce in the 1970s. Both developments are related to long-run labor force growth. In all countries, wages of women were lower than wages of men. The 1960 average gap of 38% narrowed to 29% in 1980. Factors related to these trends, including public policy, are discussed in the survey.

Professor of Economies, Columbia University, and Senior Research Staff, National Bureau of Economic Research. This paper is based, in large part, upon ongoing research in human capital at the National Bureau. This research is financed by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and from the Economic Development Administration of the United States Department of Commerce. I am grateful to Gary Becker, Barry Chiswick, and Victor Fuchs for helpful comments, and to Masanori Hashimoto and Sara Paroush for most competent assistance.

HE purpose of this paper is to explore T the effects of variations in employment on family and aggregate consumption. The results illustrate a general thesis that the effects of income variation on consumption expenditures depend on the sources of such variation. This is true in cross-sections as well as in time series, even though the major factors related to changes of income over time are not equally important as determinants of income differences at a point of time, and conversely. Growth of productivity is, of course, the essence of long-run changes in real per capita income, and fluctuations in amounts of factor inputs, particularly labor, dominate the short-run changes in income. In a cross-section, a long list of factors responsible for differences in income can be named, and, once again, differences in the degree of employment among individuals and families play an important role. For purposes of emphasis and brevity, we shall abstract from other factors in tracing the effects of the employment variable. Note that the degree of employment of members of a consumer unit observed in a given short period (say, a year) is a very unreliable indicator of the unit's longer-run income position, compared with other income-determining characteristics, such as education, occupation, property ownership, or even age (experience). This observation points to an obvious way of introducing the employment factor into consumption analysis. This is achieved by a special interpretation of the theory according to which a family's aggregate consumption is determined by its income.' As a first approximation, we may define expected or income as the income which a family receives per unit of time during which its labor input is normal.2 This definition is likely to be quite satisfactory for analytical purposes, if we restrict ourselves to the wage-earning group, particularly the unskilled. If we include the whole range of skills up to the highly trained professions in our population, we must take account of another factor which makes for a difference between current and expected income, namely changes in income with age3 (experience), quite apart from the effects of variations in employment. These age-changes are more pronounced the higher the skill level of an occupation, so that in the top occupation groups (professional and managerial) they are much more important than employment changes in distinguishing between current and expected income. Thus, in each individual case the previously defined measure of expected income should be corrected upward whenever the individual is located on the upward phase of his age-income curve, the correction being larger the steeper the curve, and conversely. In the case of income from self-employment or from property, expected income is best identified with normal returns in a given industry, and the differences between current and expected income are cyclical for groups as well as both random and age-associated for individuals. Let us now specify a model of consumption behavior along the lines of expected income theory, using this particular approximation of the concept of expected income. Because of its commitment to a different interpretation of expected income, the Modigliani-Brumberg model is not useful in the present context. While Friedman's framework is more appropriate, some of its assumptions which the deliberate non-specificity of the concept of permanent income made possible will be changed to suit the purposes at hand. It is of interest to note that the modifications do not involve complica* This paper was presented at the Boston meetings of the Econometric Society, August I958. Research embodied in it was carried out as part of the Rockefeller Foundation Consumption-Income Distribution Research Project at the University of Chicago. The author is indebted to Dorothy S. Brady and Margaret G. Reid for valuable comments. 'As expounded by Friedman in A Theory of the Consumption (Princeton, I957); and by ModiglianiBrumberg in Utility Analysis and the Consumption Function in Post-Keynesian Economics, ed. K. Kurihara (New Brunswick, I954). 2 We abstract from property income throughout the analysis. 'Reference here is made to age and occupation of the family head.

This paper joins a few very recent attempts to analyze migration in the awareness of the family context. In contrast to most of them, my focus is exclusively on the family context. The paper defines family ties relevant to migration decisions and explains their effects on the probability of migration, on consequent changes in employment and earnings of family members, as well as on family integrity itself. Hopefully, the paper provides material for a missing chapter on family economics as well as an addition to the economics of labor supply arid of human capital formation.

An economic definition of family ties relevant to migration decisions leads to the exploration of their effects on the probability of migration, on consequent changes in employment and earnings of family members, and on family stability. It is shown that ties represent negative "personal" externalities which are usually, but not always, internalized by the family. ties tend to deter migration, to reduce the employment and earnings of migrating wives, and to increase the employment and earnings of their husbands. The growth of labor market attachment of women creates an increase in migration ties, which both deters migration and contributes to marital instability. Conversely, growing marital instability stimulates migration and reinforces the upward trends in women's labor force participation.

Empirical investigation of employment effects of minimum wage legislation is a subject of continuing interest, judging by a growing number of studies. The older studies were concerned mainly with changes in employment in low-wage industries. In the more recent work, attention has shifted to effects on unemployment in low-wage demographic groups, such as teenagers. Despite the statistical difference there is no apparent recognition of a conceptual as well as substantive distinction between minimum wage effects on employment and those on unemployment. The purpose of this paper is to explore the analytical distinction between employment and unemployment effects in the hope of providing some understanding of the observations. Though related empirical work is far from being definitive the findings appear to be informative.