The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages

Martha Bailey, Brad Hershbein and Amalia Miller

No 17922, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Decades of research on the U.S. gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of "the Pill" in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for life-cycle wages. Using state-by-birth-cohort variation in legal access, we show that younger access to the Pill conferred an 8-percent hourly wage premium by age fifty. Our estimates imply that the Pill can account for 10 percent of the convergence of the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s.

JEL-codes: J13 J16 J3 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-lma
Note: CH DAE ED LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (87)

Published as Martha J. Bailey & Brad Hershbein & Amalia R. Miller, 2012. "The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 225-54, July.

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