Abstract

Combining district-level measures of World War I military fatalities with full-count census microdata, we show that wartime mortality increased postwar female labor force participation in England and Wales. Women shifted away from traditionally female occupations, while military deaths increased the shares of single and widowed women, whose participation rates were higher. Yet the overall effect of military mor-tality on postwar female labor force participation remained modest. A harmonized comparison with France suggests that stronger internal migration in England and Wales rapidly dissipated local marriage- and labor-market imbalances, while more generous pensions for war widows weakened their labor supply response.

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