Collaborative Research: Motherhood and Medicine: An Historical Perspective on Health, Fertility and Women's Work and Earnings

生育率的大幅波动和妇女劳动力参与率的急剧上升是20世纪最显著的经济现象之一。本项目旨在评价医学进步对这些发展的影响。这个研究项目包括两个部分。实证分析评估了医疗进步对妇女生育、人力资本投资和劳动力参与的影响。该项目使用1935年至1955年期间产妇死亡率的下降作为医疗进步的简要衡量标准。它利用这种下降的时间和强度的地理差异来衡量其对处于生命周期不同阶段的不同妇女群体的影响。然后，该项目开发了一个理论模型，其中产妇保健的改善决定了生育成本的下降，并减少了妇女在家庭活动中的相对优势。医疗进步对生育率有两种相反的影响：一种是积极的直接影响，因为生育成本降低了；另一种是消极的间接影响，因为妇女投资市场技能的动机增加了。这一模式内生地导致了从20世纪30年代末开始的生育率和妇女参与的上升，以及从20世纪70年代开始的生育率下降和参与的持续上升。分析需要大量的数据收集工作。该项目需要关于产妇、胎儿和新生儿死亡率、生育率、教育、劳动力参与率以及人口和经济变量的分类历史时间序列。这些数据将用于实证分析，并用于校准理论模型。该项目是经济学中第一个分析孕产妇健康改善对美国生育率和妇女劳动力市场结果的共同历史演变的影响的项目。出发点是，直到20世纪头几十年，妇女的产妇角色与重大的健康风险有关。产妇死亡率和发病率严重阻碍了妇女的工作能力，削弱了她们投资人力资本的动机。从那时起，医学进步大大降低了生育成本。拟议的研究旨在分析医疗进步对生育率和妇女经济成果的作用。更广泛的影响：这项研究将孕产妇健康与妇女生育能力、人力资本投资和工作决定联系起来。研究结果可能会引起广泛的经济学、历史学、人口学和社会学研究人员的兴趣。该分析还可提供一个框架，定量评估公共卫生举措对妇女教育、工作和收入的影响，从而有助于评价这些举措。这项研究也将与研究人员的教学相结合，特别是在研究生阶段。研究生和本科生的研究助理将被介绍重要的技能和潜在的研究课题，以发展自己。广泛的数据收集工作将产生一个可供其他研究人员使用的历史数据集。

The substantial swings in fertility and the dramatic rise in thelabor force participation of women are among the most notable economic phenomena of the 20th century. This project seeks to evaluate the impact of medical progress on these developments. The research project comprises two components. The empirical analysis evaluates the effect of medical progress on women's fertility, human capital investment and labor force participation. This project uses the decline in maternal mortality between 1935 and 1955 as a summary measure of medical progress. It exploits geographical variation in the timing and intensity of this decline to gauge its impact on different cohorts of women at varying points of the life-cycle. The project then develops a theoretical model where improvements in maternal health determine a decline in the cost of having children and reduce the comparative advantage of women in home activities. Medical progress has two opposite effects on fertility: a positive direct effect that arises from the reduction in the cost of children and a negative indirect effect stemming from the rise in women's incentive to invest in market skills. The model endogenously generates the rise in fertility and women's participation starting in the late 1930s, as well as the decline in fertility and the continued rise in participation from the 1970s on. The analysis requires an extensive data collection effort. This project needs disaggregated historical time series on maternal, fetal and neonatal mortality, on fertility, education, labor force participation, as well as demographic and economic variables. The data will be used in the empirical analysis and for the purpose of calibrating the theoretical model.This project is the first in economics to analyze the impact of improvements in maternal health on the joint historical evolution of fertility and women's labor market outcomes in the US. The point of departure is that the maternal role of women was associated with a substantial health risks until the early decades of the 20th century. Maternal mortality and morbidity significantly hindered women's ability to work and weakened their incentives to invest in human capital. Since then medical progress greatly reduced the cost of having children. The proposed research seeks to analyze the role of medical progress on fertility and the economic outcomes of women.Broader Impacts: This research links maternal health to women's fertility, human capital investment and work decisions. The results will potentially be of interest to a broad range of researchers in economics, history, demography and sociology. The analysis can also aid the evaluation of public health initiatives by providing a framework to quantitatively assess their impact on education, work and earnings of women. The research will also be integrated with the teaching of the investigators, especially at the graduate level. Graduate and undergraduate research assistants will be introduced to important skills and potential research topics to develop on their own. The extensive data collection effort will result in a historical dataset that will be made available to other researchers.