Married Registered Nurses' Labour Force Participation

Abstract

Traditionally, nursing staffing planning policies have been directed toward increasing or curtailing professional training outputs in a manner similar to other health professions. Nursing is almost exclusively a female occupation in which a majority of the participants are married, and a married woman's labour force participation has to be balanced with family responsibilities; as such, participation may tend to be short-term or intermittent A more fruitful staffing planning approach might be to direct attention toward those nurses who are already trained: the so-called "pool" of nursing supply. The problem is to understand and take account of this intermittent or secondary nature of married nurses' labour force participation. In effect, what distinguishes married registered nurses who work from those who do not? The purpose of the study, then, was to investigate concomitants of married registered nurses' labour force participation, in order to identify factors that might be useful as predictors of or manipulatable influences on the future supply of nurses. This report is a synthesis of a larger report (Laing, 1986). Literature Factors associated with labour force participation of women in general have been studied in the United States and Canada but very few studies have dealt with a particular professional group. Six studies of nurses' labour force participation have been located (Bishop, 1973; Bognanno, Hixson & Jeffers, 1974; Greenleaf, 1983; Link & Settle, 1979, 1980; Sloan & Richupan, 1975). All utilized an economic conceptual framework which included family life cycle variables. Each employed a type of regression modelling technique to estimate the effect of a slightly different group of independent variables on labour force participation. Several studies used U.S. Census data (Bognanno, Hixson & Jeffers, 1974; Link & Settle, 1979, 1980; Sloan & Richupan, 1975), another used state registration data (Bishop, 1973), while Greenleaf (1983) used secondary questionnaire data. Bishop used towns and