The Employment Effects of Gender-Specific Minimum Wage

Arbeitspapier

During the 1910's, twelve states passed and implemented the first minimum-wage laws in the history of the United States. These laws were applying to specific industries and only to female employees. This paper studies the employment impact of these gender-specific minimum-wage laws, using full count Census data from 1880 to 1930. We apply a triple-difference strategy exploiting variation across states, industries, and time, to both the full sample of U.S. counties and to the restricted group of contiguous county pairs. We estimate separate models for male and female adults, and find that these laws led to a decrease in female employment and an increase in the employment of adult men. Guided by a simple labor demand setting, we estimate the average elasticity of substitution between male and female labor, and show that the two inputs were, on average, gross substitutes. We provide suggestive evidence of a long-run impact of gender-specific minimum-wage laws on female labor force participation, after the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 290

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Labor Demand ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
• Subject: Minimum wage ; labor demand ; gender gap

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Marchingiglio, Riccardo ; Poyker, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State
• (where): Chicago, IL
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/262692
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET