The Unassuming Economist

Source: NBER Working Paper

Historically, the number and wages of women in the labor force grew at a significant pace during the 1970s and 1980s but began stalling in the early 1990s, especially for college graduates.

In this paper, the authors have argued that this discontinued growth since the 1990s is a consequence of growing inequality. They show that slowdown in participation and wage growth was concentrated among women married to highly educated and high-income husbands, whose earnings grew dramatically over the period under study. Through a model of household labor supply, they qualitatively analyze the above-mentioned effect and account for the rise in the gender wage gap for college graduates.