hort’s work history from another. Of these numerous factors, three relate to each cohort’s early experiences: schooling, work in the market economy, and work in the home. Data on the median years of schooling show a rise in educational attainment of young American women beginning approximately with cohorts born between 1900 and 1910. For a brief period young women increased their years of education by about 33% from the ages of 9 years to 12 years. Early education lead to a later increase in high school education. These women left school from 1915 to 1928. The percentage of women who attained four or more years of college increased most rapidly with cohorts born after 1940. The labor force participation rate of native-born white, single women of 15 to 24 years old was 30% in 1890, 33.5% in 1900, 45.1% in 1920, and about 40% from 1930 to 1960. This cohort carried with it through time a labor market experience and education that differed from those of prior generations. When it was single, this cohort was employed mainly in the clerical sector of the market economy when it was employing young single women almost exclusively. Cohorts of women born around the early twentieth century were able to achieve both an increase in their educational attainment and in increase in their labor market experience when single, by spending less time “at home” helping their mothers. In 1880 over 50% of unmarried urban daughters between the 16 and 24 years old were full-time workers in their parents’ households. By 1900 about 30% were, and by 1930 practically no post-adolescent single women were either not in school or not in the labor force. This shift away from home chores by teenage girls and young women may have been an influential factor both in delaying the entrance of older married women into the labor market and in encouraging labor market work for these younger women when they married.The data on the schoo...
