Research
• Collective action and gender roles: evidence from women suffrage demonstrations [JMP]
Abstract: Can collective action drive transformations in social roles and attitudes? I study the effect of local exposure to women's suffrage protests in the early 20th century in the US on different indicators of gender roles. Enfranchisement was anticipated to enhance women's awareness, leading to a critical reevaluation of more traditional family structures, according to suffrage movement leaders. This study investigates whether raising awareness about one's rights, alongside obtaining them, can foster social transformations. I study cross-county marches organized between 1912 and 1914 by a group of activists to ask women's right to vote. I build a novel historical database using local newspaper archives to map the itinerary of the marches. Then, using individual-level data from US censuses (1880-1920), I compare individual outcomes in localities along the \textit{suffragettes}' paths with those along roads of similar importance in the same state, both before and after the marches. Results suggest that exposure to \textit{suffragette} demonstrations led to significant changes, including (i) an increase in young women's university enrollment rates, (ii) a decline in fertility among married women, and (iii) an increase in school enrollment for teenagers, benefiting specifically teenage girls in small families. Additionally, evidence from newspaper coverage suggests that women were likely exposed to \textit{suffragette} ideas beyond the marches due to the relative growing interest in the topic in the towns treated in the following years, as evidenced by newspaper mentions of suffrage-related activities.
Presentation: Economic History Society Annual Conference (Newcastle, England), IMERA-AMSE Workshop in Gender inequalities (Marseille, France), Development Reading Group, Boston University (Boston MA, USA), Graduate Workshop in Economic History at Harvard University (Cambridge MA, US), World Cliometrics Conference (Dublin, Ireland), LAGV (Marseille, France), AFSE (Paris, France), FRESH Workshop (Cologne, Germany), IRES Lunch Seminar (Louvain, Belgium), Lewis Lab Graduate Student Workshop (Manchester, England) and AMSE PhD Seminar 2023 (Marseille, France).
• Roads, education and employment: evidence from the US rural highways [with Clément Bosquet]
Abstract: We study education and employment responses of teenagers to changes in local economic opportunities driven by transport infrastructure improvement. We exploit the timeline of the US highways construction in the mid-20th century to measure how rural individuals aged 14 and 15—the legal working age—respond to new economic opportunities triggered by highway connectivity. We combine US Census data from 1940 to 1970 with historical records on highway locations and opening times, and employ an established instrumental variable to account for the non-random placement of highways. Preliminary results suggest that road connectivity increases participation in the labor market. This is driven by young boys starting to work as (unpaid family) farm laborers in the agricultural sector, which has declined at a slower rate in connected counties. Further investigations indicate that, although highways do not affect school enrollment, early employment in agriculture, implying long working hours, is negatively correlated with teenagers’ education level. Looking at 24- and 25-years old men, we show that these effects of an early connection to the highway network seem to persist after 10 years.
Presentation: RES & SES Annual Conference (Glasgow, Scottland), European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society (Berlin, Germany), Decentralized Mobility and Electricity Working Group Seminar (Online), UEA 2022 (Washington DC, US), EALE 2022 (Padova, Italy), JMA 2022 (Rennes, France), UEA 2022 (London, UK), RGS 2022 (Online), ADRES 2022 (Online), UEA 2021 (Online) and AMSE PhD Seminar 2021 (Online).
• Forbidden love: the impact of banning interracial marriages [with Björn Brey and Roberta Ziparo]
Abstract: The majority of US states enacted miscegenation laws (racial mixing) at varying points during the 19th and 20th century. These laws made interracial marriages “prohibited and void”’ making them a cornerstone policy of segregation. Exploiting variations in introduction and coverage across states, we study how these laws shaped family structures and reinforced differences in economic outcomes across racial groups. To do so, we combined information on state level miscegenation laws with longitudinal data from the US censuses (1850- 1940). Preliminary results suggest that the implementation of miscegenation laws changed the composition of marriages and increased out-of-state migration of Black Americans. In addition, the codification of race was essential to the enforcement of interracial marriage prohibitions, which led to the introduction of blood purity rules. In line with this, we find that racial identity changes of initially Black Americans, a non-negligible phenomenon, declined when miscegenation laws were introduced. Further preliminary explorations suggest that the laws also had an impact on keeping an exploitative economic model in place.
Presentation: EHA 2022 (La Crosse WI, USA), AMSE PhD Seminar 2022 (Marseille, France) and EHS 2022 (Cambridge, UK).