Engines of Liberation

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  • 1 January 2003
    • preprint
      • Published in RePEc
Abstract
Electricity was born at the dawn of the last century. Households are inundated with a flood of consumer durables. What was the impact of this consumer goods revolution. It is argued here that the consumer goods revolution was conducive to liberating women from the home. To analyze this hypothesis, a Beckerian model of household production is developed. Households must decide whether or not to adopt the new technologies and whether a married woman should work. Can such a model help to explain the rise in married female labor-force participation that occurred in the last century? Yes.

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