family policies on women's careers and children's wellbeing. There is to date little or no evidence of beneficial effects of …

Maternal mortality was the second-leading cause of death for women in childbearing years up until the mid-1930s in the … advances. We argue that these medical advances, by enabling women to reconcile work and motherhood, were essential for the … joint rise in married women's labor force participation and fertility over this period. We also show that the diffusion of …

Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime-age years either pregnant or … nursing. Since then, the introduction of infant formula reduced women's comparative advantage in infant care, by providing an … associated with women's reproductive role. We explore the hypothesis that these developments enabled married women to increase …