Chris Blattman

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“It’s raining men! Hallelujah?”

That’s the title of a new paper by Pauline Grosjean and Rose Khattar, arguing that conservative gender norms persist:

We document the implications of missing women in the short and long run. We exploit a natural historical experiment, which sent large numbers of male convicts and far fewer female convicts to Australia in the 18th and 19th century.

In areas with higher gender imbalance, women historically married more, worked less, and were less likely to occupy high-rank occupations.

Today, people living in those areas have more conservative attitudes towards women working and women are still less likely to have high-ranking occupations.

We document the role of vertical cultural transmission and of homogamy in the marriage market in sustaining cultural persistence.

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