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Career and Family: College Women Look to the Past

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  • Claudia Goldin

Abstract

Recent college graduate women express frustration regarding the obstacles they will face in combining career and family. Tracing the demographic and labor force experiences of four cohorts of college women across the past century allows us to observe the choices each made and how the constraints facing college women loosened over time. No cohort of college graduate women in the past had a high success rate in combining family and career. Cohort I (graduating c. 1910) had a 50% rate of childlessness. Whereas cohort III (graduating c. 1955) had a high rate of childbearing, it had initially low labor force participation. Cohort IV (graduating c. 1972) provides the most immediate guide for today's college women and is close to the end of its fertility history. It is also a cohort that can be studied using the N.L.S. Young Women. In 1991, when the group was 37 to 47 years old, 28% of the sample's college graduate (white) women had yet to have a first birth. The estimates for career vary from 24% to 33% for all college graduate women in the sample. Thus only 13% to 17% of the group achieved 'family and career' by the time it was about 40 years old. Among those who attained career, 50% were childless. Cohort IV contains a small group of women who have combined family with career, but for most the goal remains elusive.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudia Goldin, 1995. "Career and Family: College Women Look to the Past," NBER Working Papers 5188, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5188
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    1. Lee Benham, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 375-394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Benham, Lee, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 57-71, Part II, .
    3. Goldin, Claudia, 1992. "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195072709.
    4. Lee Benham, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility, pages 57-75, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ana Maria Takahashi & Shingo Takahashi & Thomas Maloney, 2015. "Gender salary and promotion gaps in Japanese academia: Results from science and engineering," Discussion Papers 1522, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
    2. Janzen, Sarah A. & Magnan, Nicholas & Mullally, Conner C. & Sharma, Shruti, 2021. "Training and Shifting Gender Norms: Evidence from a training intervention in rural Nepal," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 314065, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Zamora Flores, María del Mar, 2021. "Carrera versus familia: Las consecuencias del embarazo adolescente que enfrentan las jóvenes bolivianas," Documentos de trabajo 5/2021, Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas (IISEC), Universidad Católica Boliviana.
    4. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    5. Virginia Sanchez Marcos, 2007. "What accounts for the increase in college attainment of women?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 41-44.
    6. Ebrahim Azimi, 2015. "The effect of children on female labor force participation in urban Iran," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-11, December.
    7. Sauré, Philip & Zoabi, Hosny, 2014. "International trade, the gender wage gap and female labor force participation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 17-33.
    8. Shen, Danqing, 2018. "Better Educated, Fewer Divorces: The Impact of College Education Quality on Marriage Outcomes," MPRA Paper 94198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Foley, Kelly, 2017. "The gender gap in university participation: What role do skills and parents play?," CLEF Working Paper Series 8, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    10. Angrist, Joshua D & Evans, William N, 1998. "Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 450-477, June.
    11. Zheng Mu & Yu Xie, 2016. "'Motherhood penalty' and 'fatherhood premium'? Fertility effects on parents in China," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 35(47), pages 1373-1410.
    12. David S. Loughran, 2000. "Does Variance Matter? The Effect of Rising Male Inequality on Female Age at First Marriage," Working Papers 00-12, RAND Corporation.
    13. Kelly Foley, 2019. "The gender gap in university enrolment: Do parents play a role beyond investing in skills?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(2), pages 441-489, May.
    14. White, Eugene N., 1996. "The past and future of economic history in economics," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 61-72.
    15. Paweenawat, Sasiwimon Warunsiri & Liao, Lusi, 2022. "Parenthood penalty and gender wage gap: Recent evidence from Thailand," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Julia Behrman & Pilar Gonalons-Pons, 2020. "Women's employment and fertility in a global perspective (1960–2015)," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 43(25), pages 707-744.
    17. Janet Z. Giele & Elke Holst, 1997. "Dynamics of Women's Labor Force Participation in the United States and West Germany, 1983 to 1990," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 66(1), pages 55-61.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

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