I provide new evidence on the relative “powers” of contraception and abortion policy in effecting the dramatic social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s. Trends in sexual behavior suggest that young women’s increased access to the birth control pill fueled the sexual revolution, but neither these trends nor difference-in-difference estimates support the view that this also led to substantial changes in family formation. Rather, the estimates robustly suggest that it was liberalized access to abortion that allowed large numbers of women to delay marriage and motherhood.

Daylight, television schedules, and time zones can alter timing and induce temporal coordination of economic activities. With the American Time Use Survey for 2003–2004 and data from Australia for 1992, we show that television schedules and the locations of time zones affect the timing of market work and sleep, with differences in timing being generated partly by returns to coordination with other agents. The responsiveness to time zone differences is greatest among workers in industries in national markets. An exogenous shock resulting from an area’s nonadherence to daylight saving time leads its residents to alter work schedules to coordinate with people elsewhere.