The role of mothers on female labour force participation: an approach using historical parish records

Abstract

Using Portuguese parish data from 1675 to 1925, we estimate the relationship between a mother’s participation in the labour force and that of her daughter. We adapt a methodology to prevent bias that originates from potentially non-random missing data. Ignoring the missingness process results in substantial downward-biased estimates of the relationship, even for a proportion of missing values as low as 20 per cent. In contrast, our methodology yields unbiased estimates regardless of the proportion of missing values. We document the existence of a strong, positive association between the mother’s participation and that of her daughter long before the twentieth century’s substantial changes in education and the labour market.