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Added and Discouraged Workers in the Late 1930s: A Re-Examination

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Author Info
T. Aldrich Finegan
Robert A. Margo

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Abstract

We revisit a famous controversy in labor economics: the debate between W.S. Woytinsky and Clarence Long over "added" and "discouraged" worker effects in the late 1930s. According to Woytinsky, the Depression created large numbers of added workers, persons who entered the labor force when the head of the household became unemployed. Long, on the other hand, believed that the number of added workers was trivial compared with the number of discouraged workers, and subsequent research has largely supported Long. Using a sample of married women drawn from the public use sample of the 1940 census, we show that added worker effect was alive and well in the late 1930s, but that its viability was muted by the operation of work relief. Wives whose husbands held "public emergency work relief" jobs with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) or related agencies were far less likely to participate in the labor force than wives whose husbands were employed in a private sector or non-relief government job, or whose husbands were unemployed, so much so that the added worker effect disappears in the aggregate if the impact of work relief is ignored.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Historical Working Papers with number 0045.

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Date of creation: Apr 1993
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0045

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N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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  1. Sundstrom, William A., 1992. "Last Hired, First Fired? Unemployment and Urban Black Workers During the Great Depression," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(02), pages 415-429, June. [Downloadable!]
  2. Goldin, Claudia, 1989. "Life-Cycle Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(1), pages 20-47, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Goldin, Claudia D, 1991. "The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 741-56, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Fleisher, Belton M & Rhodes, George, 1976. "Unemployment and the Labor Force Participation of Married Men and Women: A Simultaneous Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 58(4), pages 398-406, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Lundberg, Shelly, 1985. "The Added Worker Effect," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 11-37, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Kesselman, Jonathan R & Savin, N Eugene, 1978. "Three-and-a-Half Million Workers Never Were Lost," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 205-25, April.
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