Trade-offs in the family: sibling effects on daughters' activities in 1910

Abstract

This paper uses the 1910 Census Public Use Sample to examine how the presence and activities of key family members shaped the labor force activity, domestic work, and schooling of working-age daughters. There is no evidence that daughters worked to send their brothers to school; parents practiced a more egalitarian distribution of resources than the literature suggests. Having brothers and sisters in school increased a daughter's odds of attending school herself. Similarly, daughters with employed siblings were more likely to be gainfully employed. Nonetheless, parents allocated activities to sons and daughters in ways that reinforced traditional gender roles. Working brothers increase daughters' likelihood of working in the home, while reducing their odds of attending school.