EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Missing Men: World War I and Female Labor Force Participation

Jörn Boehnke and Victor Gay ()

Journal of Human Resources, 2022, vol. 57, issue 4, 1209-1241

Abstract: Using spatial variation in World War I military fatalities in France, we show that the scarcity of men due to the war generated an upward shift in female labor force participation that persisted throughout the interwar period. Available data suggest that increased female labor supply accounts for this result. In particular, deteriorated marriage market conditions for single women and negative income shocks to war widows induced many of these women to enter the labor force after the war. In contrast, demand factors such as substitution toward female labor to compensate for the scarcity of male labor were of second-order importance.

JEL-codes: J12 J16 J22 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
Note: DOI: 10.3368/jhr.57.4.0419-10151R1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/57/4/1209
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Missing Men. World War I and Female Labor Force Participation (2022) Downloads
Working Paper: The Missing Men: World War I and Female Labor Force Participation (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: The Missing Men: World War I and Female Labor Force Participation (2020) Downloads
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:57:y:2022:i:4:p:1209-1241

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Resources from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-28
Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:57:y:2022:i:4:p:1209-1241