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Title: Cultural Change as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labor Force Participation over a Century
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2013
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Abstract: This paper develops a learning model of cultural change to investigate why women's labor force participation (LFP) and attitudes toward womens work both changed dramatically. In the model, women's beliefs about the long-run payoff from working evolve endogenously via an intergenerational learning process. This process generically generates the data's S-shaped LFP curve and introduces a novel role for wage changes via their effect on the speed of intergenerational learning. The calibrated model does a good job of replicating the evolution of female LFP in the United States over the last 120 years and finds that the new role for wages was quantitatively significant.
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Authors: Fernandez, Raquel
Periodical (Full): American Economic Review
Issue: 1
Volume: 103
Pages: 472-500
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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