Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women's Economic and Social Status and Political Participation

Abstract

The last fifty years of women's social and economic progress have been lauded as the "grand gender convergence," the "second demographic transition," and the "rise of women"-terms pointing to the remarkable transformation in women's social and economic roles since the 1960s. Many metrics document these changes.

Figure 1

Gender Earnings Ratios of Full-Time Workers, 1955–2014 Source: Authors’ compilation based on CPS (Blau and Kahn, forthcoming).

Figure 2

U.S. Women’s Labor-Force Participation, 1910–2010 Sources: Authors’ calculations based on decennial censuses and ACS (Ruggles et al. 2010). Notes: Decennial censuses from 1910 to 2000 decennial censuses and ACS from 2005, 2010, and 2013. Samples are restricted to women ages sixteen and older who do not reside in group quarters. Allocated values are omitted. Historical comparisons necessitate that race categories are very crude and do not account for changes in how individuals self-identify by race or ethnicity over time.

Figure 3

Bachelor’s Degree or More Source: DiPrete and Buchmann 2013.

Figure 4

Women’s Share of Advanced Degrees Source: DiPrete and Buchmann 2013.

Figure 5

Advanced Degrees Awarded to Women Source: DiPrete and Buchmann 2013. Note: The y-axis is on a log scale.

Figure 6

U.S. General Fertility Rate and Completed Childbearing Sources: Authors’ compilation (CDC 2000; Ruggles et al. 2010). Notes: Fertility rates are from the CDC’s historical 1909 to 2000 statistics (CDC 2000). Mean live births are computed using the 1940 to 1990 decennial census IPUMS samples (Ruggles et al. 2010) and the 1995 to 2010 June CPS. The general fertility rate (right vertical axis) is the number of births per thousand women (all or white women only) ages fifteen to forty-four in the population from Vital Statistics.

Figure 7

Mean Age at First Marriage-Cohabitation and First Birth and Share Ever Marrying Sources: Authors’ compilation based on IPUMS samples (Ruggles et al. 2010), CPS, and National Survey of Family Growth (Smock et al. 2013). Notes: Decennial census figures from 1940 through 1980; CPS figures from 1979 to 1995; NSFG figures from 1982 through 2010. The figure plots the mean age at first marriage (conditional on ever married by age thirty-nine), first household formation or union (the younger of first marriage or first nonmarital cohabitation), first birth (left vertical axis), and share ever married (right vertical axis) against single year-of-birth cohort. The NSFG and CPS trends are based on three-year cohort moving averages.