Mothers and Sons: Preference Formation and Female Labor Force Dynamics

This paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man- one brought up in a family in which the mother worked- has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time. We present crosssectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work. We use variation in the importance of World War II as a shock to women's labor force participation-as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across U. S. states-to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism. © 2004 MIT Press