The Historical Evolution of Female Earnings Functions and Occupations

Of all the changes in the history of women's market work, few have been more impressive than the rapid emergence and feminization of the clerical sector and the related decline in manufacturing employment for women. Although a century ago few women were clerical workers, as early as 1920 22% of all employed non-farm women were, and about 50% of all clerical workers were women. Employment for women in the clerical sector expanded at five times the annual rate in manufacturing from 1890 to 1930, and during the same period of time wages for female clerical workers fell relative to those in manufacturing. This paper explores the underlying causes of these dramatic sectoral shifts by estimating the relationship between earnings and experience for manufacturing and clerical workers from 1888 to 1940. It is seen that earnings profiles for employment in manufacturing rose steeply with experience and peaked early, while those in the clerical sector were much flatter and did not peak within the relevant range. Returns to off-job training and depreciation with age and with time away from the labor force also differed between these occupations. A model of sectoral shift is developed in which workers choose occupations and therefore the time path of training on the basis of their life-cycle labor force participation and their consumption value of education. The coefficients from the earnings function estimations are used to demonstrate that the decline in the relative wage of clerical to manufacturing work from 1890 to 1930 can be explained by such a model, Finally, it is shown that a sizable percentage of the difference in the growth of female employment in the manufacturing and clerical sectors can be explained by various labor supply factors.

Economic Well-Being and Child Labor: The Inter action of Family and Industry

How did industrialization in the nineteenth century affect the well-being of children among American working class families? Two revealing surveys from 1890 and 1907 are used to examine the implications of child labor on schooling decisions and on possible offsetting intrafamily transfers, in the form of current "retained" earnings or future asset transfers. Both issues are analyzed within the context of a formal model of family labor supply, in which returns to schooling accrue after the youth has left the household and thus the interests of the parents and the child need not coincide. Parents working in the industries examined did not, it appears, compensate their children for the reduced future earnings implied by child labor, in either the current or in future time periods. But, in addition, the migration of families in which parental altruism was weak may have eliminated much of the apparent increase in family income due to higher child earnings. We end with a note reconciling our findings with the long term trend away from child labor.

The Relative Productivity Hypothesis of Industrialization: The American Case, 1820-1850

The American Northeast industrialized rapidly from about 1820 to 1850, while the South remained agricultural. Industrialization in the Northeast was substantially powered during these decades by female and child labor, who comprised about 45% of the manufacturing work force in 1832. Wherever manufacturing spread in the Northeast, the wages of females and children relative to those of adult men increased greatly from levels in the agricultural sector which were previously quite low. Our hypothesis of early industrialization is that such development proceeds first in areas whose agriculture, for various reasons, puts a low value on females and children relative to adult men. The lower the "relative productivity" of females and children in the pre-industrial agricultural or traditional economy the earlier will manufacturing evolve, the proportionately greater will the relative wages for females and children increase, and the relatively more manufactured goods will the economy produce. A two-sector model which incorporates a difference in "relative productivity" between two economies is used to develop seven propositions relating to the process of early industrialization. Data from two early censuses of manufactures, 1832 and 1850, and other sources provide evidence for our hypothesis, demonstrating, for example, the low relative productivity of females and children in the Northeast agricultural sector, and the increase in relative wages for these laborers with industrialization. We conclude that factors with low relative productivity in agriculture were instrumental in the initial adoption of the factory system and of industrialization in general in the U.S., and we believe these results are applicable to contemporary phenomena in developing countries.

The Poor at Birth: Infant Auxology and Mortality at Philadelphia's Almshouse Hospital, 1848-1873

This paper presents an analysis of birth weights and infant mortality in mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia using obstetrics records of Philadelphia's Almshouse hospital, an institution for the poor and their offspring. Children of the poor weighed between 2,900 and 3,200 grams on average at birth, or about the 10th to 25th percentile of modern birth weight standards. 3rthweights declined during the Civil War decade, consistent with the poor state of the economy in the l80s, because birth weights were lower than modern standards the urban poor suffered from higher rates of infant mortality than today. But infant mortality was far worse than that expected from a modern schedule of mortality by birth weight, and a major determinant of excess mortality appears to be the poor quality of nineteenth century obstetrics.

Shocking Labor Supply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Women's Labor Supply

The most prominent feature of the female labor force across the past hundred years is its enormous growth. But many believe that the increase was discontinuous. Our purpose is to identify the short- and long-run impacts of WWII on the labor supply of women who were currently married in 1950 and 1960. Using WWII mobilization rates by state, we find a wartime impact on weeks worked and the labor force participation of married white (non-farm) women in both 1950 and 1960. The impact, moreover, was experienced almost entirely by women in the top half of the education distribution.Economic

The Post-Bellum Recovery of the South and the Cost of the Civil War: Comment

Economic

The Future of Inequality: The Other Reason Education Matters So Much

Economic

The Cost of Workplace Flexibility for High-Powered Professionals

The authors study the pecuniary penalties for family-related amenities in the workplace (e.g., job interruptions, short hours, part-time work, and flexibility during the workday), how women have responded to them, and how the penalties have changed over time. The pecuniary penalties to behaviors that are beneficial to family appear to have decreased in many professions. Self-employment has declined in many of the high-end professions (e.g., pharmacy, optometry, dentistry, law, medicine, and veterinary medicine) where it was costly in terms of workplace flexibility. The authors conclude that many professions have experienced an increase in workplace flexibility, driven often by exogenous factors (e.g., increased scale of operations and shifts to corporate ownership of business) but also endogenously because of an increased number of women. Workplace flexibility in some positions, notably in the business and financial sectors, has lagged.Economic

Human Capital

Human capital is the stock of skills that the labor force possesses. The flow of these skills is forthcoming when the return to investment exceeds the cost (both direct and indirect). Returns to these skills are private in the sense that an individual’s productive capacity increases with more of them. But there are often externalities that increase the productive capacity of others when human capital is increased. This essay discusses these concepts historically and focuses on two major components of human capital: education and training, and health. The institutions that encourage human capital investment are discussed, as is the role of human capital in economic growth. The notion that the study of human capital is inherently historical is emphasized and defended.Economic