This paper analyzes the relationship between the divorce rate and female labor force participation and it determines whether this relationship is consistent when Hispanic women are compared to other women.  Do more women in the labor force lead to increased female financial independence and a higher divorce rate?  Or does a higher divorce rate mean married women will hedge this increased risk of marital instability by seeking employment?  If higher divorce rates cause more women to enter the labor market, is the response for Hispanic women similar to that of other women?
      This paper makes two contributions to the literature.  First, it analyzes the relationship between divorce rates and labor force participation for Hispanic women and compares the response to that of other women.  Second, in a novel use of data, the paper reports divorce rates, fertility rates, earnings and labor force participation rates for Hispanic and other women that were extracted from the March supplement of the Current Population Survey.  Data on racial differences in divorce rates are not officially reported and this data source permits extracting annual divorce rates for various races. 
      Dickey Fuller tests are performed on each time series to determine whether it exhibits a unit root.  A series of Granger causality tests are performed to shed light on potential causal relationships between the various endogenous variables.  Given the presence of unit roots, a VAR model is specified, and cointegration tests are performed to determine whether a long-run relationship between the variables exists.  After incorporating the presence of a long-run relationship, a vector error correction model is estimated and impulse functions are used to analyze the relationship between divorce rates, fertility rates, labor force participation and income.
     The impulse response functions should generate results that are economically intuitive.  For example, increased wages should lead both to more Hispanic and to more women overall entering the labor market.  Higher divorce rates should result in lower fertility rates.  The authors’ previous analysis of aggregate U.S. data reveals that increases in the real wage of females lead to fewer births.  The same analysis showed that increases in female real income resulted in higher divorce rates.  One of the more interesting relationships is the one between divorce rates and labor force participation.   The authors’ previous study showed higher divorce rates lead to increased labor force participation by women.  Whether Hispanic women have a similar response as other women is one of the questions that will be answered by this paper.