TY  - JOUR
AU  - Boustan, Leah Platt
AU  - Collins, William J
TI  - The Origins and Persistence of Black-White Differences in Women's Labor Force Participation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19040
PY  - 2013
Y2  - May 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19040
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19040
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19040.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Leah Platt Boustan
Princeton University
Industrial Relations Section
Louis A. Simpson International Bldg.
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609-258-7116
E-Mail: lboustan@princeton.edu

William J. Collins
Department of Economics
Vanderbilt University
VU Station B #351819
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235-1819
Tel: 615/322-3428
Fax: NA
E-Mail: william.collins@vanderbilt.edu
M1  - published as Leah Platt Boustan, William J. Collins. "The Origin and Persistence of Black-White Differences in Women's Labor Force Participation," in Leah Platt Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo, editors, "Human Capital in History: The American Record" University of Chicago Press (2014)

AB  - Black women were more likely than white women to participate in the labor force from 1870 until at least 1980 and to hold jobs in agriculture or manufacturing. Differences in observables cannot account for most of this racial gap in labor force participation for the 100 years after Emancipation. The unexplained racial gap may be due to racial differences in stigma associated with women's work, which Goldin (1977) suggested could be traced to cultural norms rooted in slavery. In both nineteenth and twentieth century data, we find evidence of inter-generation transmission of labor force participation from mother to daughter, which is consistent with the role of cultural norms.
ER  -