Cultural Change as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labor Force Participation over a Century

Raquel Fernández

American Economic Review, 2013, vol. 103, issue 1, 472-500

Abstract: This paper develops a learning model of cultural change to investigate why women's labor force participation (LFP) and attitudes toward women’s work both changed dramatically. In the model, women's beliefs about the long-run payoff from working evolve endogenously via an intergenerational learning process. This process generically generates the data's S-shaped LFP curve and introduces a novel role for wage changes via their effect on the speed of intergenerational learning. The calibrated model does a good job of replicating the evolution of female LFP in the United States over the last 120 years and finds that the new role for wages was quantitatively significant.

JEL-codes: D83 J16 J22 J31 N31 N32 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.1.472
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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