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Maximum Hours Legislation and Female Employment: A Reassessment

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  • Goldin, Claudia
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    Abstract

    The causes and results of state maximum hours legislation for female workers, passed from 1848 to the 1920s, are explored and found to differ from the interpretation presented by Landes (1980). Although maximum hours legislation served to decrease scheduled hours in 1920, the effect was minimal. Curiously, the legislation seems to have operated equally for men. Legislation affecting only females was symptomatic of a general desire by labor for lower hours, and these lower hours were achieved in the tight, and otherwise special, World War I labor market. Most significant, the restrictiveness of the legislation had no adverse effect on the employment share of women in manufacturing. Reasons for the relationship between the decline in hours worked by men and legislation protecting women are suggested, but it still is not clear what precise mechanisms operated to decrease hours of work for all.

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    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2645471/Goldin_MaximumHours.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Harvard University Department of Economics in its series Scholarly Articles with number 2645471.

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    Date of creation: 1988
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    Publication status: Published in Journal of Political Economy
    Handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:2645471

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    Cited by:
    1. Dora L. Costa, 1998. "The Wage and the Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991," NBER Working Papers 6504, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman & Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Productivity in Manufacturing and the Length of the Working Day: Evidence from the 1880 Census of Manufactures," Macroeconomics 0012003, EconWPA.
    3. Dora L. Costa, 2000. "Hours of work and the Fair Labor Standards Act: A study of retail and wholesale trade, 1938รป1950," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 53(4), pages 648-664, July.
    4. Mulligan, Casey B. & Shleifer, Andrei, 2004. "Population and Regulation," Working paper 274, Regulation2point0.
    5. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "A Century of Labor-Leisure Distortions," NBER Working Papers 8774, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Huberman, Michael & Minns, Chris, 2007. "The times they are not changin': Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870-2000," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 538-567, October.
    7. Yana van der Meulen Rodgers & Gunseli Berik, 2006. "Asia's Race to Capture Post-MFA Markets: A Snapshot of Labor Standards, Compliance, and Impacts on Competitiveness," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2006_02, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    8. Michael Huberman & Chris Minns, 2005. "Hours of Work in Old and New Worlds: The Long View, 1870-2000," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp95, IIIS.

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