TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fernandez,Raquel
AU  - Fogli,Alessandra
AU  - Olivetti,Claudia
TI  - Preference Formation and the Rise of Women's Labor Force Participation: Evidence from WWII
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10589
PY  - 2004
Y2  - June 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10589
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10589.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Raquel Fernández
Department of Economics
New York University
19 West 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-8908
Fax: 212/995-4186
E-Mail: raquel.fernandez@nyu.edu

Alessandra Fogli
University of Minnesota
1925 Fourth Street South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
E-Mail: afogli@umn.edu

Claudia Olivetti
Boston University
Department of Economics
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617/613-1228
Fax: 617/353-4449
E-Mail: olivetti@bu.edu
AB  - This paper presents intergenerational evidence in favor of the hypothesis that a significant factor explaining the increase in female labor force participation over time was the growing presence of men who grew up with a different family model--one in which their mother worked. We use differences in mobilization rates of men across states during WWII as a source of exogenous variation in female labor supply. We show, in particular, that higher WWII male mobilization rates led to a higher fraction of women working not only for the generation directly affected by the war, but also for the next generation. These women were young enough to profit from the changed composition in the pool of men (i.e., from the fact that WWII created more men with mothers who worked). We also show that states in which the ratio of the average fertility of working relative to non-working women is greatest, have higher female labor supply twenty years later.
ER  -