 Women’s labor force participation and household technology adoptionGautam Bose, Tarun Jain and Sarah Walker European Economic Review, 2022, vol. 147, issue C Abstract: We examine how women’s employment leads to household technology adoption in the context of mid-century United States. Using World War II factories and male casualty rates as an instrument for female labor demand, we find that the rise in women’s labor force participation between 1940 and 1950 increased appliance ownership by 25 percent in the average county. This result holds in both panel and cross-sectional estimates, and for two different technologies. We find that increases in household income associated with women’s employment is a salient channel and that the results are not driven by changes in the skill profile or employment outcomes of men, or migration patterns. Together, the evidence is consistent with a historiography that suggests that as women went to work, they adopted appliances with new purchasing and bargaining power. Keywords: Household technology; Women’s labor force participation; Domestic labor; Twentieth-century United States (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:147:y:2022:i:c:s0014292122001027 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104181 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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