This study investigates female labor force participation in the Netherlands between 1985 and 2014 and proposes a new approach to address the age-period-cohort identification problem. The prime working age model assumes a constant effect of age on female labor force participation for women who are at least 45 years old but younger than 50. This model generates plausible predictions of the age-, period- and cohort profiles of female labor participation. Those predictions are very similar to the ones obtained by using the intrinsic estimator approach of Yang et al. (Sociol Methodol 34(1):75-110, 2004).