Shifting Female Labour Supply in Turkey: The Interplay of Marriage, Fertility, and Education

For the last several decades, Turkey has had a lower female labor force participation rate than that of many other developed and developing countries. However, after decades of stagnation, recent trends since the 2000s show notable changes. While previous research has emphasized broad social forces in shaping women’s employment in Turkey, the purpose of this study is to study to bring an updated examination of these forces and to quantify their impact. Using data from the Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) from 2005 to 2019 – a large, nationally representative survey of the working-age population (ages 15+) – and employing a method that maps family relationships more comprehensively and systematically than previous studies using the same dataset, this study decomposes the factors contributing to labor force participation (LFP) differences between high- and low-educated women over time. Both the regression and decomposition results show that a husband’s education and income, along with the number of children, are key determinants of women’s labor force participation and have played a crucial role in the modest recent increase in female labor force participation (FLFP). Moreover, this study challenges the prevailing narrative that highly educated women have driven labor market gains; instead, it shows that increases have been led by lower-educated women, and that women’s labor force decisions reflect adaptive responses to economic necessity rather than adherence to traditional gender norms.