Full Citation

Title: Short-run and Long-run Effects of Household Electrification

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2014

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: This paper studies how advances in home production technologies affect female employment and investment in daughters. The empirical analysis exploits large cross-country and cross-state variation in the timing of household electrification in the U.S. for the period 1930 to 1960. To address potential endogeneity 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. Household electrification had no immediate impact on female employment, but is associated with increased school attendance, particularly among teenage daughters, and ultimately led to improvements in the labor market outcomes of subsequent cohorts of women. These findings are consistent with a model in which household modernization permanently expanded the time-budget constraint of current and future generations of women. Moreover, the results suggest that the diffusion of modern technology into the home during the first half of the 20th century can account for a significant fraction of the rise in female employment after 1950.

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Lewis, Joshua

Publisher: University of Montreal

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

Countries: