HEALTH × SOCIETY

The Pill

1960 CE

History · Contemporary · Holocene · Meghalayan

In May 1960, a pill of synthetic hormones became the first drug approved to prevent a condition that is not a disease. Its demographic and economic effects are among the best measured in social science: in the United States, where young unmarried women won legal access, first births came later, college graduates entered professional programmes in greater numbers, the age at first marriage soared, and more women took paid work, for more hours a year. Over a hundred million women worldwide use its descendants.

Why it matters

For the first time in the species' history, fertility became reliably separable from sex, and controllable by the person who bears its costs. Economists credit the pill with lowering the price of long professional training for women, one measurable driver of their entry into medicine, law and business. Few molecules have rearranged family structure, workplaces and demography so quickly.

Dating & uncertainty

The FDA approved Enovid as a contraceptive in May 1960. The measured social effects came later, and unevenly: the pill spread quickly among married women but reached young single women only from the late 1960s, as American states lowered the age of majority, and it is that legal patchwork that lets economists isolate its effect on careers and marriage.

Sources

1. Goldin & Katz (2002), Journal of Political Economy · The power of the pill: oral contraceptives and women's career and marriage decisionsdoi:10.1086/340778
2. Bailey (2006), Quarterly Journal of Economics · More power to the pill: the impact of contraceptive freedom on women's life cycle labor supplydoi:10.1093/qje/121.1.289
3. Christin-Maitre (2013), Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism · History of oral contraceptive drugs and their use worldwidedoi:10.1016/j.beem.2012.11.004

Our species’ history as one day

23:59:4118.1 s before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day