participate in the labor force, especially in advanced economies (Azevedo, Lopez-Calva, and Perova 2012; Fletcher and Wolfe 2009; Herrera, Sahn, and Villa 2016). This effect is more muted in EMDEs, potentially reflecting an earlier average age of marriage, which tends to be associated with lower female labor force participation (United Nations 2012).

Second, for relevant age groups, educational attainment is associated with higher participation rates, except for young men and women aged 20-24. The positive correlation between completion rates and labor force participation may partly reflect higher compensation for more educated workers. For young men, higher tertiary educational attainment is associated with lower labor force participation. This might reflect the lack of demand for employment in sectors where these educated workers would expect to be employed, discouraging them from labor force participation (Klasen and Pieters 2013). However, for men aged 50-64 and all workers aged 65 years and older, education becomes an insignificant determinant of labor force participation (as in Fallick and Pingle 2007). Tertiary enrollment rates in all relevant age groups are associated with lower labor force participation rates, as students devote time to completing their degree (Kinoshita and Guo 2015; Linacre 2007; and Tansel 2002).

Third, life expectancy is one of the main determinants of participation for workers aged 50 and above (Fallick and Pingle 2007). For the younger ones among them, between the ages of 50-64, higher life expectancy is associated with higher labor force participation, possibly reflecting the need to accumulate savings for a longer retirement period or the positive association between better health among older workers and higher incomes (Haider and Loughran 2001). Among those aged 65 years or older, higher life expectancy is associated with higher labor force participation in advanced economies, but does not significantly change participation in EMDEs. Life expectancy may be a weak proxy for a healthy old age in EMDEs with less-developed health care systems or where differences in life expectancy might mostly reflect differences in infant mortality (Eggleston and Fuchs 2012).

Fourth, labor force participation is procyclical—albeit less so in EMDEs than in advanced economies—in most age groups until the age of 50. Labor force participation rises when real GDP is above its HP-filtered trend and declines when real GDP is below its HPfiltered trend.<sup>22</sup> As the age increases, the sensitivity to cyclicality decreases and participation eventually becomes countercyclical (Balakrishnan et al. 2015; Duval, Eris, and Furceri 2011). This may reflect greater ability of more experienced workers to remain employed or return to employment after spells of unemployment during recessions (Elsby, Hobijn, and Ş ahin 2015; Shimer 2013). However, participation becomes pro-cyclical again (although not statistically significant) for workers aged 65 and above as they become eligible to retire and may be readier to drop out of the labor force in a weaker economy. This result is broadly robust to defining the business cycle as deviations of real GDP from the 10-year moving average or from a linear-quadratic trend (tables 8, 9).

> 22 In several instances, there were no statistically significant differences between advanced economies and EMDEs in the cyclicality of their labor force participation. Hence, the interactions were omitted from the regressions.

35