Household Resources and U.S. Women's Work: Factors Affecting Gainful Employment at the Turn of the Century

Using the Census P.U.S., we focus on household composition and resources which influenced the distribution of paid work to female adult and younger members of households in 1900. Controls for individual and geographic variables are included. Two different household-level processes lowered women's rate of gainful employment, although their usage varied by race and ethnicity. First, home-based alternatives inhibited seeking jobs for which women might have been recorded as gainfully employed. Second, alternatives were structured by household composition. Families with older daughters or related single adults might urge these members to work, engendering a trade-off between the labor of wives and their older children or relatives. The presence of men or nonfamily also plays an important role. Advantages of our model include the study of work and family life as a single set of relations; the integration of the detail of historical studies in single cities with the measurement of national patterns through aggregate Census materials; and a focus on factors reducing the reporting, as well as actual rates, of women's gainful employment.