Women, Wealth Effects, and Slow Recoveries

Abstract

Business cycle recoveries have slowed in recent decades. This slowdown comes entirely from female employment, as women’s employment rates converged toward men’s during the past half-century. But does the slowdown in the growth of female employment rates translate into a slowdown for overall employment rates? We estimate the extent to which women “crowd out” men in the labor market across US states, and find that it is small. Through the lens of a general equilibrium model with home production, we show this statistic implies that 60-75 percent of the slowdown in recent business cycle recoveries can be explained by female convergence.(JEL D13, E24, E32, J16, J21)