, and participants in the conferences on Social Inequality and Educational Disadvantage provided valuable comments. The Russell Sage Foundation generously provided funding for this research. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Decades of research on the US gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of “the Pill” in altering women’s human capital investments and its ultimate implications for life-cycle wages. Using state-by-birth-cohort variation in legal access, we show that younger access to the Pill conferred an 8 percent hourly wage premium by age 50. Our estimates imply that the Pill can account for 10 percent of the convergence of the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s.

Almost 50 years after domestic US family planning programs began, their effects on childbearing remain controversial. Using the county-level roll-out of these programs from 1964 to 1973, this paper reevaluates their shorter and longer term effects on US fertility rates. I find that the introduction of family planning is associated with significant and persistent reductions in fertility driven both by falling completed childbearing and childbearing delay. Although federally funded family planning accounted for a small portion of the post-baby boom US fertility decline, my estimates imply that they reduced childbearing among poor women by 19 to 30 percent. (JEL I38, J12, J13, J18)

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The 1960s ushered in a new era in US demographic history characterized by significantly lower fertility rates and smaller family sizes. What catalyzed these changes remains a matter of considerable debate. This paper exploits idiosyncratic variation in the language of “Comstock” statutes, enacted in the late 1800s, to quantify the role of the birth control pill in this transition. Almost 50 years after the contraceptive pill appeared on the US market, this analysis provides new evidence that it accelerated the post-1960 decline in marital fertility. (JEL J12, J13, K10, N31, N32)

This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13 percent decrease in one-year mortality risk among beneficiaries amounts to 20 to 40 percent of the 1966 poor/non-poor mortality gap for this age group. Large effects for those 65 and older suggest that increased access to primary care has longer-term benefits, even for populations with near universal health insurance. (JEL H75, I12, I13, I18, I32, I38, J14)

This paper reviews the literature in historical record linkage in the United States and examines the performance of widely used record-linking algorithms and common variations in their assumptions. We use two high-quality, hand-linked data sets and one synthetic ground truth to examine the direct effects of linking algorithms on data quality. We find that (i) no algorithm (including hand linking) consistently produces representative samples; (ii) 15 to 37 percent of links chosen by widely used algorithms are classified as errors by trained human reviewers; and (iii) false links are systematically related to baseline sample characteristics, showing that some algorithms may introduce systematic measurement error into analyses. A case study shows that the combined effects of (i)–(iii) attenuate estimates of the intergenerational income elasticity by up to 29 percent, and common variations in algorithm assumptions result in greater attenuation. As current practice moves to automate linking and increase link rates, these results highlight the important potential consequences of linking errors on inferences with linked data. We conclude with constructive suggestions for reducing linking errors and directions for future research. (JEL C45, C81, J62, N31, N32)

We examine the hypothesis that advances in household technology caused the US baby boom, and we find no support for this claim. Advances in household technology occurred before the baby boom, while fertility declined. From 1940 to 1960, levels/changes in county-level appliance ownership and electrification negatively predict levels/changes in fertility rates. Exposure to electricity in early adulthood and children-ever-born are negatively correlated for the relevant cohorts. The Amish, who used modern technologies much less than other US households, experienced a coincident baby boom. This evidence can be reconciled with economic theory if other home-produced goods are substitutes with children. (JEL D12, J13, N32, N92, O33)