Working Paper: NBER ID: w17922
Authors: Martha J. Bailey; Brad Hershbein; Amalia R. Miller
Abstract: Decades of research on the U.S. gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of "the Pill" in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for life-cycle wages. Using state-by-birth-cohort variation in legal access, we show that younger access to the Pill conferred an 8-percent hourly wage premium by age fifty. Our estimates imply that the Pill can account for 10 percent of the convergence of the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s.
Keywords: Contraception; Gender Gap; Wages; Human Capital; Labor Force Participation
JEL Codes: J13; J16; J3; N32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| early access to the pill (I19) | women's hourly wages (J31) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | labor force experience (J21) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | educational attainment (I21) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | occupational choice (J29) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | decrease in wages in early twenties (J31) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | higher wages in thirties and forties (J39) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | higher education (I23) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | occupational training (J24) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | narrowing of the gender wage gap in the 1980s (J79) |
| early access to the pill (I19) | narrowing of the gender wage gap in the 1990s (J79) |