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Women's contribution to productivity: women's work on the job and at home has been key to increasing productivity growth.(4 Adding it up: Women's role in the macroeconomy)
- Article from:
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Regional Review
- Article date:
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January 1, 2005
- Author:
- Shaw, Kathryn
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2005 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN THE LATE 1990s, anyone reading the newspaper saw stories describing the New Economy and the accompanying rise in the nation's rate of productivity growth. Labor productivity (measured as output per hour worked), which had previously grown at about 1.5 percent per year from 1973 to 1995, accelerated to about 2.5 percent a year from 1995 to 2000. Although productivity typically falls coming out of a recession, as it did in 2001, more recent data suggest that trend productivity remains high compared to the 1970s and 1980s.
This rise in productivity is quite large by historic standards and brings with it very significant positive implications for the economy. In particular, ...