An Analysis of the Relationship between Husband's Income, Family Size and Wife's Employment in the Early Stages of Marriage

Abstract

Data from a panel study of a marriage cohort are used to investigate the causal dynamics underlying the negative relationship between wife's employment and family size. Path analysis is used to reveal the effects of husband's income, wife's education, wife's age at marriage, family size at different points in time, and wife's early employment on both family size and wife's employment in subsequent time intervals. The results indicate that during the early stages of marriage and family building the presence of young children consistently exerts a strong negative effect on wife's employment. While younger children decrease wife's employment, there is some evidence of a positive effect on her employment from larger numbers of older children. In contrast, the effects from wife's employment to her subsequent fertility are less consistent. Husband's income and income changes remain consistently negatively related to the probability that the wife works. Strong effects are not found from wife's early work experience to subsequent work and family size.