Decades of research on the U.S. gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of "the Pill" in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for...

Decades of research on the U.S. gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of "the Pill" in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for...

This paper exploits biological fertility shocks as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of motherhood delay on the cognitive ability of the next generation. Using detailed panel data on women in the NLSY79 and their first-born children aged 5 to 14, we find that a year of delay...