IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/kfcvs_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did Organized Labor Induce Labor? Unionization and the American Baby Boom

Author

Listed:
  • Downes, Henry

Abstract

Labor unions have many well-documented effects on economic outcomes that are plausibly related to family formation. I study the impact of unionization on fertility using evidence from the largest expansion of unionism in American history: the enactment of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). I introduce new estimates of local union membership and exploit variation in exposure to the NLRA shock to estimate the place level effect of union growth on fertility outcomes. Unionization has positive effects on birth rates and completed fertility, and can account for approximately 20% of overall fertility increases during the Baby Boom. Effects are driven primarily by wage growth, protection against adverse labor market shocks, and impacts on female labor force participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Downes, Henry, 2025. "Did Organized Labor Induce Labor? Unionization and the American Baby Boom," SocArXiv kfcvs_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:kfcvs_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/kfcvs_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/67ae53d5bdd056b792313c42/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/kfcvs_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:kfcvs_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.