Various macroeconomic effects resulted from the changing economic and
societal structure in the second half of the 20th century, which greatly impacted
women’s economic position in the United States. Using dynamic programming as the
main modeling tool, and U.S. data for factual evidence, three papers are developed
to test the validity of three related hypotheses focusing on female employment,
education, marriage, and divorce trends.
The first chapter estimates how much of the post-World War II evolution
in employment and average wages by gender can be explained by a model where
changing labor demand requirements are the driving force. I argue that a large
fraction of the original female employment and wage gaps in mid-century, and the
subsequent shrinking of both gaps, can be explained by labor reallocation from
brawn-intensive to brain-intensive jobs favoring women’s comparative advantage in
brain over brawn. Thus, aggregate gender-specific employment and wage gap trends
resulting from this labor reallocation are simulated in a general equilibrium model.