The Queen of Inventions: How Home Technology Shaped Women’s Work and Children’s Futures
This paper studies the impact of the home sewing machine, an innovation that enabled women to generate income from within the household, on women's employment and the outcomes of their children. Exploiting geographic and temporal variation in the staggered expansion of Singer sewing machine sales agents across U.S. counties, I show that access
to the sewing machine raised women's employment as dressmakers by 27-36 percent after ten years of exposure. The effects were strongest in households most dependent on children's earnings, particularly those with boys, older children, and single mothers, where exposure lowered child labor by approximately 1.2~percentage points and raised school attendance by 2.8~percentage points after ten years. In the long run, effects decline with age at exposure: occupational mobility gains are concentrated among children exposed before age 5, while literacy gains are significant across all exposure groups and largest for the youngest cohort. The gains were largest for children from single-headed households, where budget constraints were most binding. Taken together, these findings show how a domestic production technology expanded women's economic opportunities, relaxed household constraints, and generated lasting gains across generations.
Working paper here
This paper studies the impact of the home sewing machine, an innovation that enabled women to generate income from within the household, on women's employment and the outcomes of their children. Exploiting geographic and temporal variation in the staggered expansion of Singer sewing machine sales agents across U.S. counties, I show that access
to the sewing machine raised women's employment as dressmakers by 27-36 percent after ten years of exposure. The effects were strongest in households most dependent on children's earnings, particularly those with boys, older children, and single mothers, where exposure lowered child labor by approximately 1.2~percentage points and raised school attendance by 2.8~percentage points after ten years. In the long run, effects decline with age at exposure: occupational mobility gains are concentrated among children exposed before age 5, while literacy gains are significant across all exposure groups and largest for the youngest cohort. The gains were largest for children from single-headed households, where budget constraints were most binding. Taken together, these findings show how a domestic production technology expanded women's economic opportunities, relaxed household constraints, and generated lasting gains across generations.
Working paper here