This paper studies how advances in home production technologies affect female employment
and investment in children. To study these relationships, I develop a Beckerian model of
home production. I show that household modernization has an ambiguous immediate impact
on female employment, but generates increased investment in daughters’ human capital, ultimately
causing a rise in employment for subsequent cohorts of women. I examine these
predictions empirically, exploiting substantial cross-county and cross-state variation in the
timing of household electrification in the U.S. for the period 1930 to 1960. To address potential
endogeneity in the decision to modernize, I estimate instrumental variables regressions,
based on a newly assembled dataset that provides information on the construction of over
1,000 power plants during this period. Identification relies on plausibly exogenous changes
in the cost of supplying power to different communities based on their location. The empirical
results support this intergenerational mechanism. Household electrification had no
immediate impact on female employment, but is associated with increased school attendance,
particularly among teenage daughters. Meanwhile, females raised in modern households were
significantly more likely to work as adults. The results suggest that the diffusion of modern
technology into the home during the first half of the 20th century can account for a large
fraction of the rise in female employment after 1950.