Three Essays in Gender Economics

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays viewing gender in the United States through an economic lens. In the past half-century men and women have be- come more equal in many economic and social dimensions, but vast differences in outcomes remain. The causes of these differences, whether they be cultural norms, preferences or economic constraints, are important and the subject of these essays. The first chapter is on the the sorting of men and women into occupations. Results indicate that women sacrifice wages in order to avoid male dominated occupations, but that temporary shocks to the number of men or women in an occupation do not persist in the long run. The second chapter studies how married households decide who works in the labor market and who works in the home. Men are found to want to work less if their wives work, whereas women are found to want to work more if their husbands work. The third chapter looks at whether families in the United States prefer to have sons instead of daughters and finds that although households with daughters are more likely to be female headed, they are no longer more likely to go on to have more children.