Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T12:24:28.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Work Relief and the Labor Force Participation of Married Women in 1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

T. Aldrich Finegan  and
Robert A. Margo
T. Aldrich Finegan
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235.
Robert A. Margo
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02140.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Economic analysis of the labor supply of married women has long emphasized the impact of the unemployment of husbands—the added worker effect. This article re-examines the magnitude of the added worker effect in the waning years of the Great Depression. Previous studies of the labor supply of married women during this period failed to take account of various institutional features of New Deal work relief programs, which reduced the size of the added worker effect.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 64 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bowen, William G., and Finegan, T. Aldrich, The Economics of Labor Force Participation (Princeton, NJ, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, E. Cary, “Fiscal Policy in the ‘Thirties’: A Re-appraisal,” American Economic Review, 46 (12 1956), pp. 857–79.Google Scholar
Burkhauser, Richard V., Butler, J. S., and Finegan, T. Aldrich, “Changes in the Linkage Between Relative Wages and Economic Wellbeing: A Fifty Year Perspective” (Manuscript in progress, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University.)Google Scholar
Cain, Glen G., Married Women in the Labor Force: An Economic Analysis (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar
Darby, Michael R., “Three-and-a-Half Million U. S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934–1941,” Journal of Political Economy, 84 (02 1976), pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, “Life-Cycle Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications,” Journal of Labor Economics, 7 (01 1989), pp. 20–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin, Claudia, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York, 1990).Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, “The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Employment,” American Economic Review, 81 (09 1991), pp. 741–56.Google Scholar
Higgs, Robert, “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U. S. Economy in the 1940s,” this Journal, 52 (03. 1992), pp. 41–60.Google Scholar
Howard, Donald S., The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York, 1943).Google Scholar
Jenkins, R., Procedural History of the 1940 Census of Population and Housing (Madison, WI, 1983).Google Scholar
Jencks, Christopher, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Cambridge, MA, 1992).Google Scholar
Kesselman, Jonathan R., and Savin, N. E., “Three-and-a-Half Million Workers Never Were Lost,” Economy Inquiry, 16 (04. 1978), pp. 205–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, Clarence D., The Labor Force Under Changing Income and Employment (Princeton, 1958).Google Scholar
Lundberg, Shelley, “The Added Worker Effect,” Journal of Labor Economics, 3 (01. 1985), pp. 11–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A., “Interwar Unemployment in the United States: Evidence from the 1940 Census Sample,” in Eichengreen, Barry and Hatton, Tim, eds., Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1988), pp. 325–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A., “The Microeconomics of Depression Unemployment,” this Journal, 51 (06 1991), pp. 333–41.Google Scholar
Mincer, Jacob, “Labor Force Participation and Unemployment: A Review of Recent Evidence,” in Gordon, Robert A. and Gordon, Margaret S., eds., Prosperity and Unemployment (New York, 1966), pp. 73–112.Google Scholar
Moffit, Robert, “Incentive Eflfects of the U. S. Welfare System: A Review,” Journal of Economic Literature, 30 (03. 1992), pp. 1–61.Google Scholar
Peppers, Larry, “Full-Employment Surplus Analysis and Structural Change: The 1930s,” Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Winter 1973), pp. 197–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Unemployment, Volume I (Washington, DC, 1931).Google Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Volume IV: The Labor Force, parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 (Washington, DC, 1943).Google Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, The Labor Force (Sample Statistics), Special Report on Employment and Family Characteristics of Women (Washington, DC, 1943).Google Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC, 1976).Google Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1940: Public Use Microdata Sample (Washington, DC, 1983).Google Scholar
U. S. Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935–1943 (Washington, DC, 1946).Google Scholar
Wallis, John, and Benjamin, Daniel K., “Private Employment and Public Relief During the Great Depression,” (Photocopy, Department of Economics, University of Maryland, 07 1989).Google Scholar
Woytinsky, W. S., Three Aspects of Labor Dynamics (Washington, DC, 1942).Google Scholar