The life-cycle labor supply of women born at the turn of the 20th century diverged sharply from previous cohorts. Although they had similar participation rates in early adulthood, younger cohorts were significantly more likely to work at middle age. This paper documents a link between these changing patterns of female labor supply and the Great Depression. We find that the onset of the Great Depression led to a large increase in young women's labor force participation in 1930 via an added-worker effect. Cohorts induced into the workforce in the early 1930s had significantly higher employment rates through the 1940s and 1950s, suggesting a permanent impact of the Great Depression on women's lifecycle labor supply.

After almost a century-long pattern of rising marital instability, divorce rates levelled off in 1980 and have been declining ever since. The timing of deceleration and decline in the rates of marital dissolution interestingly coincides with a period of substantial growth in wage inequality. This paper establishes a novel connection between the two phenomena and discusses potential explanations for the underlying link. Using female marital histories in a duration analysis framework combined with regional and temporal variation in the pattern of male wage dispersion, I show that inequality has a significant stabilizing effect on the marriage. Quantitatively, increases in male wage dispersion can roughly explain up to 30% of the fall in the mean separation probability between 1979 and 1990. Several plausible explanations are discussed: changes in spousal labour supplies, female wage inequality, income uncertainty, social capital as well as a hypothesis where inequality renders the option to divorce less attractive by making remarriage more difficult. Inégalité de la rémunération des hommes et taux de dissolution des mariages: Y-a-t-il un lien? Après un pattern quasi-séculaire de croissance de l'instabilité maritale, les taux de divorce se sont stabilisés autour de 1980 et ont décliné depuis. On a noté que la décélération et le déclin dans les taux de divorce ont correspondu à une période de croissance substantielle dans les inégalités de salaires. Ce texte établit une connexion inédite entre ces deux phénomènes et discute d'explications potentielles pour ce lien. En utilisant des histoires maritales de femmes dans un cadre d'analyse de la durée, combinées à l'étude de variation dans les patterns régionaux et temporels de la dispersion des salaires des hommes, on montre que l'inégalité a un effet stabilisateur significatif sur le mariage. Quantitativement, les accroissements dans la dispersion des salaires des hommes expliquent jusqu'à 30 % de la chute dans la probabilité moyenne de séparation entre 1979 et 1990. Plusieurs explications plausibles sont discutées : changements dans l'offre de travail des époux, inégalité dans le salaire des femmes, incertitude des revenus, capital social, tout autant que l'hypothèse que l'inégalité rend l'option du divorce moins attrayante à proportion que le remariage est plus difficile.

WWII induced a dramatic increase in female labor supply, which persisted over time, particularly for women with higher education. Using Census micro data we study the qualitative aspects of this long term increase through the lenses of the occupations women held after the war. Almost two decades after its end, we find that WWII had lasting, albeit complex but interesting effects on the occupational landscape. It led to a significant increase in the presence of young women, who were of working age at the time of the war, in manufacturing and professional/managerial occupations, while it entailed a decrease in the presence of older cohorts in clerical.Though differently, the effects surprisingly extended to the next generation of women who were too young to be working at the time of the war. For this cohort, the increase was concentrated in clerical and manufacturing. The entry of this very young cohort in clerical jobs and the exit of the older, suggests within-gender crowding-out; the increased presence of both cohorts in manufacturing, that the legacy of the wartime Rosies permeated occupational choices.

This paper provides the first long-run assessment of adolescent alcohol control policies on later-life health and labor market outcomes. Our analysis exploits cross-state variation in the rollout of "Zero Tolerance" (ZT) Laws, which set strict alcohol limits for drivers under age 21 and led to sharp reductions in youth binge drinking. We adopt a difference-in-differences approach that combines information on state and year of birth to identify individuals exposed to the laws during adolescence and tracks the evolving impacts into middle age. We find that ZT Laws led to significant improvements in later-life health. Individuals exposed to the laws during adolescence were substantially less likely to suffer from cognitive and physical limitations in their 40s. The health effects are mirrored by improved labor market outcomes. These patterns cannot be attributed to changes in educational attainment or marriage. Instead, we find that affected cohorts were significantly less likely to drink heavily by middle age, suggesting an important role for adolescent initiation and habit-formation in affecting long-term substance use.