About

Martha J. Bailey is a Professor of Economics at UCLA Anderson. Her research focuses on labor economics, demography, and health in the United States within the context of long-term economic history. Her work has examined the effects of modern contraception on women’s childbearing, career decisions, and the gender gap in wages. She has contributed to understanding how access to birth control influences unintended pregnancies, the impact of minimum wage laws, and the economic benefits of public preschool programs. Bailey's research provides insights into wealth inequality, wellness, and public policy, emphasizing the intersection of economic behavior, health, and social responsibility.

Research topics

• Economics
• Political Science
• Data Mining
• Machine Learning
• Geography
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Operations management
• Algorithm
• Developmental psychology
• Data science
• Economic growth
• Market economy
• Environmental health
• Econometrics
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Labour economics
• Biology
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• The Long-Run Effects of California’s Paid Family Leave Act on Women’s Careers and Childbearing: New Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and US Tax Data

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2025-01-31 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We use administrative tax data to analyze the cumulative, long-run effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (CPFL) on women's employment, earnings, and childbearing. A regression-discontinuity design exploits the sharp increase in the weeks of paid leave available under the law. We find no evidence that CPFL increased employment, boosted earnings, or encouraged childbearing, suggesting that CPFL had little effect on the gender pay gap or child penalty. For first-time mothers, we find that CPFL reduced employment and earnings a decade after they gave birth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Economics of Childbearing: Trends, Progress, and Challenges

  Annual Review of Economics · 2025-08-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The neoclassical economics of childbearing turns 65 this year, marking the anniversary of Gary Becker's foundational article on the subject in 1960. This review article begins with a study of how childbearing has evolved in the United States over the last century, identifying distinctive features of the post-1960 era associated with the second demographic transition. Next, the article discusses standard neoclassical models of childbearing and shows how augmenting them with a supply side, including access to and information about contraception and abortion, increases their explanatory power. After reviewing recent quasi-experimental research testing this augmented model, the final part of the article reflects upon the implications of the recent transformation in US fertility rates for women and children and suggests fruitful avenues for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• The Long-Run Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Act on Women's Careers and Childbearing: New Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and U.S. Tax Data

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Spontaneous Tension Hemopneumothorax After Weight Training

  2024-04-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Economic History of American Inequality

  2024-10-14 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  A meticulous examination of the history and roots of economic inequality within the United States. This volume refines and extends the economic history literature on economic inequality in the United States. Economic inequality manifests itself on various dimensions, including access to resources and economic security, as well as access to education and opportunities for migration, marriage, and other important life decisions. Measuring inequality and studying its variation over time and in response to economic shocks such as recessions and wars deepen our understanding of how the economy operates and can inform the design of public policies. The studies in this compendium present comprehensive evidence on income distribution during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drawing on new data on wages and prices. They also consider disparities in economic well-being that are reflected in outcomes other than wage and salary income, such as homeownership and marriage. The volume also presents new evidence on the effects of income inequality on social outcomes. It concludes with an intellectual history of “human capital, ” a core concept in the economic analysis of the underpinnings of labor market inequality.

  PublisherDOI

• The Long-Run Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Act on Women's Careers and Childbearing: New Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and U.S. Tax Data

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2024-02-28 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the 1960s, two landmark statutes-the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts-targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude that the legislation was ineffectual. This article revisits this conclusion using two research designs, which leverage (i) cross-state variation in preexisting state equal pay laws and (ii) variation in the 1960 gender gap across occupation-industry-state-group cells to capture differences in the legislation's incidence. Both designs suggest that federal antidiscrimination legislation led to striking gains in women's relative wages, which were concentrated among below-median wage earners. These wage gains offset preexisting labor market forces, which worked to depress women's relative pay growth, resulting in the apparent stability of the gender gap at the median and mean in the 1960s and 1970s. The data show little evidence of short-term changes in women's employment but suggest that firms reduced their hiring and promotion of women in the medium to long term. The historical record points to the key role of the Equal Pay Act in driving these changes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Effects of the Great Depression on Children’s Intergenerational Mobility

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines the role of the Great Depression in shaping the intergenerational mobility of some of the most upwardly mobile cohorts of the twentieth century. Using newly linked census and vital records from the Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-database, we examine the occupational and educational mobility of more than 265,000 sons and daughters born in Ohio and North Carolina. We find that the deepest and most protracted downturn in U.S. history had limited effects on sons' intergenerational mobility but reduced daughters' intergenerational mobility.

  PublisherDOI

• Who Is Financially Constrained in Their Choice of Contraceptive Method? Lessons from M-CARES

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2024-05-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Michigan Contraceptive Access, Research, and Evaluation Study (M-CARES) is a randomized control trial that examines how financial constraints affect the choice of contraceptives among uninsured individuals. Although all M-CARES participants are highly financially constrained, these constraints are more binding in some subgroups. Black women, women with less than a high school degree, and women with incomes above 250 percent of the federal poverty line are less financially constrained, whereas married women and those with three or more children are more financially constrained. A mediation analysis shows that attitudes and beliefs about contraception do not explain this heterogeneity across groups.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• RIDIR: Longitudinal Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-Database (LIFE-M)

  NSF · $2.6M · 2015–2022

• NIH Grant R03HD066145

  NIH · $152k · 2013

• Longitudinal and Intergenerational Determinants of Aging and Mortality

  NIH · $942k · 2018–2021

• NIH Grant R03HD058065

  NIH · $188k · 2010

• Community Care for All? Health Centers' Impact on Access to Care and Health

  NIH · $1.7M · 2012–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Brad J. Hershbein

  23 shared

• Melanie Guldi

  21 shared

• Andrew Goodman-Bacon

  Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

  20 shared

• Olga Malkova

  18 shared

• Zoë M McLaren

  University of Maryland, Baltimore County

  16 shared

• Jason M. Lindo

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  14 shared

• William Collins

  Stanford University

  11 shared

• Bryan A. Stuart

  Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

  10 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Vanderbilt University

  2005

• M.A., Economics

  Vanderbilt University

  2003

• B.A., Economics, German

  Agnes Scott College

  1997