Effects of Female Employment: Evidence from Teacher Certification Exams

To identify causal effects of women’s entry into paid professional work, this project exploits historical teacher certification exams as a quasi-random barrier into one of the early white-collar occupations available to women. By linking teacher-exam records to census data and applying a regression discontinuity design around passing thresholds, the study estimates how access to the teaching profession affected women’s labor-market outcomes, marriage, and fertility. It also examines intergenerational effects—how mothers’ access to teaching shaped their children’s and younger sisters’ education, labor, and marriage outcomes. This approach isolates the impact of women’s employment opportunities on family and socioeconomic trajectories during a pivotal period of labor-market transformation.