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Title: The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Household Technological Change

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: This paper studies how advances in home production technologies affect female employment and investment in children. To study these relationships, I develop a Beckerian model of home production. I show that household modernization has an ambiguous immediate impact on female employment, but generates increased investment in daughter's human capital, ultimately causing a rise in employment for subsequent cohorts of women. I examine these predictions empirically, exploiting substantial cross-country and cross-state variation in the timing of household electrification in the US for the period 1930 to 1960. To address potential endogenity in the decision to modernize, I estimate instrumental variables regressions, based on a newly assembled dataset that provides information on the construction of over 1,000 power plants during this period. Identification relies on plausibly exogenous changes in the cost of supplying power to different communities based on their location. The empirical results support this intergenerational mechanism. Household electrification had no immediate impact on female employment, but is associated with increased school attendance, particularly on teenage daughters. Meanwhile, females raised in modern households were significantly more likely to work as adults. The results suggest that the diffusion of modern technology into the home during the first half of the 20th century can account for a large fraction of the rise in female employment after 1950.

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Authors: Lewis, Joshua

Publisher: University of Montreal

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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