We use 1980, 1990 and 2000 Census data to study the impact of source country
characteristics on the labor supply assimilation profiles of married adult immigrant women
and men. Women migrating from countries where women have high relative labor force
participation rates work substantially more than women coming from countries with lower
relative female labor supply rates, and this gap is roughly constant with time in the United
States. These differences are substantial and hold up even when we control for wage offers
and family formation decisions, as well as when we control for the emigration rate from the
United States to the source country. Men’s labor supply assimilation profiles are unaffected
by source country female labor supply, a result that suggests that the female findings reflect
notions of gender roles rather than overall work orientation. Findings for another indicator of
traditional gender roles, source country fertility rates, are broadly similar, with substantial and
persistent negative effects of source country fertility on the labor supply of female immigrants
except when we control for presence of children, in which case the negative effects only
become evident after ten years in the United States.