Gender Roles and Technological Progress

Stefania Albanesi () and Claudia Olivetti ()

No 0607-12, Discussion Papers from Columbia University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime-age years either pregnant or nursing. Since then, the introduction of infant formula reduced women's comparative advantage in infant care, by providing an effective breast milk substitute. In addition, improved medical knowledge and obstetric practices reduced the time cost associated with women's reproductive role. We explore the hypothesis that these developments enabled married women to increase their participation in the labor force, thus providing the incentive to invest in market skills, which in turn reduced their earnings differential with respect to men. We document these changes and develop a quantitative model that aims to capture their impact. Our results suggest that progress in medical technologies related to motherhood was essential to generate a significant rise in the participation of married women between 1920 and 1950, in particular those with young children.

JEL-codes: J13 J16 J2 J22 N3 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-lab
Date: 2007
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.columbia.edu/RePEc/pdf/DP0607-12.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender Roles and Technological Progress (2007)
Working Paper: Gender Roles and Technological Progress (2007)
Working Paper: Gender roles and technological progress (2006)
Working Paper: Gender Roles and Technological Progress (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:clu:wpaper:0607-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Columbia University, Department of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Discussion Paper Coordinator ().