Abstract: Do the jobs that reward women's talents also offer the flexibility that they need? I document that social skill intensity and temporal flexibility are inversely correlated across occupations. Guided by a model of occupational choice, I provide evidence that this correlation creates a trade-off between women's comparative advantage in social tasks and their demand for flexible hours. As a consequence, women's disproportionate gains from each job attribute come at the expense of the other, which exacerbates the gender wage gap. I use event studies around first births to provide evidence that job inflexibility widens gender gaps in wages and employment even more following shocks to women's relative demand for flexibility, thus ruling it in as a mechanism. And, consistent with women’s skills being both valued yet constrained in highly social and inflexible occupations, the adoption of flexibility-enhancing technology has been concentrated in these sectors.

Abstract: In work environments where people interact, differences in communication styles could increase employment segregation and labor market disparities for minority groups. Building on this intuition, we develop a simple model where jobs vary in the intensity of social interaction, and productivity is increasing in both social skills and cultural similarity. Consistent with the model’s predictions, we find both descriptive and causal evidence that women, black Americans, and Latin American immigrants in the U.S. are more likely to work in social task-intensive occupations in areas where their own group has greater representation. Finally, in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we document a stronger association between one's social skills and working in a job that requires high levels of interaction for individuals with majority group speech patterns, relative to those with minority group speech patterns. 

Abstract: What caused the rapid rise in human capital accumulation in the early 20th century? This paper examines the role of the birth control movement, led by Margaret Sanger, which facilitated the rollout of over 600 birth control clinics across the United States. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that children whose mothers gained access to birth control were more likely to attend school, more likely to be literate, and less likely to report working. These findings are consistent with a quantity-quality tradeoff, in which investments in education came at the high opportunity cost of forgone income via child labor.

Abstract: When a husband migrates, his wife may control more household resources and therefore change how the household spends income. Given the prevalence of seasonal migration in developing countries, even these temporary changes could impact economic development. The extent to which these changes persist after migrant spells will magnify these consequences. Using panel data on rural households in Nepal, we examine how a husband’s migration interacts with intra-household decision-making and consumption patterns both during and after migration spells. We find a husband’s absence is associated with a 10-percentage point increase in the expenditure decisions over which the wife has full control. This coincides with a shift away from expenditures on alcohol and tobacco in favor of children’s clothing and education. Importantly, we find that husbands resume their role in decisions following a migrant’s return, but decisions are more likely to be made jointly. These persistent effects are consistent with a model where households are pushed to a new, more equitable equilibrium, then form habits that in turn cause the new equilibrium to stick, thus facilitating long-term cultural change in gender norms.