Labor Force Participation Of Married Women Research Articles

The Effect of the Spouse's Income on Employment Decisions - a Study Based on Gender Disparities Perspective

Abstract This research employs the Probit model and mediating effect models to investigate the effects and mechanism of the spouse's income on individual employment decisions from the perspective of gender disparities, drawing on data from the 2010- 2018 China Household Tracking Survey (CFPS). Findings suggest that the impact of absolute spouse’s income on employment decisions varies by gender, with higher husband income inhibiting the wife's labor force participation and vice versa. In terms of the mechanism of influence, the time spent on doing housework and wife's socioeconomic status can explain the cause. It is also discovered that the "independent side" of the family has a negative impact on the labor force participation rate of the "dependent" side, regardless of gender. Thus, the emphasis on narrowing the income gap among genders in the labor market is crucial to increase its labor force participation rate and promoting labor market equity in China. Keywords: The spouse’s income, Labor force participation, Gender disparities, Employment decisions.

A dynamic behavioral model of Korean saving, work, and benefit claiming decisions

The Republic of Korea faces a rapidly aging population that is more reliant on public pension support but pension contributions are insufficient to support its long-term obligations. As a result, there is a growing debate on what type of reforms to the current defined-pension system could balance the long-term funding of the system with insuring benefit levels for old and new beneficiaries. In this paper, we develop and estimate a dynamic behavioral model that captures essential elements of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and behavioral responses in labor supply, savings and benefit claiming to changes in the public pension system using a nationally-representative sample of married couples nearing retirement from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). We use the model estimates to evaluate the effect of counterfactual policy experiments such as increases in the contribution rate and the extension of normal retirement age on the decision to work or not work, savings and benefit claiming among individuals near retirement. While these policies are aimed at shoring up the NPS, our model demonstrates that changes to the contribution rate could discourage work and savings in married households near retirement. In particular, a 2 percentage point immediate increase in the contribution rate would reduce household savings by 2 percent among poor households, as well as reduce labor participation among wives by 3 percent and among husbands by less than a percent. When we simulate the same increase in the contribution rate in even increments over five years, households anticipate the policy change and increase their savings to compensate for the future fall in income, dissipating undesirable behavioral responses such as decreased work and savings. In contrast, an increase of 2 years in the normal retirement age leads to a 3 percent increase in household savings, and to an increase in both husband and wife labor force participation (less than 1 percent and 3 percent respectively). These finding suggest policy design, such as phase-in periods, can be leveraged to minimize undesirable behavioral responses of households near retirement. Despite their potential detrimental effects in labor supply and savings, findings from a benefit-cost analysis suggest that the costs of undesired behavioral responses to an increase in contribution rates are orders of magnitude smaller than the revenue benefits to the NPS's finances.

Women hold up half the sky? Gender identity and the wife's labor market performance in China

In this paper, we empirically study the impact of gender identity on the wife's labor supply in China where a high female employment rate and a large population that has a traditional gender identity coexist. We find that the wife's gender identity affects her labor force participation for all cohorts, and the wife's gender identity affects earnings only for rural cohorts. The impact of gender identity varies among generational, regional, and educational cohorts. Husbands still guide their wives, i.e., a husband's gender identity affects his wife's labor force participation and earnings.

Labor-Force Participation of Married Women in Turkey: A Study of the Added-Worker Effect and the Discouraged-Worker Effect

ABSTRACTWe analyze married women’s labor-supply responses to their husbands’ job loss (added-worker effect) and worsening of unemployment conditions (discouraged-worker effect). We construct six two-year pseudopanels based on the previous year’s labor market outcomes using nationally representative Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys from 2005 to 2010. We find that women whose husbands involuntarily transition from employment to unemployment are more likely to participate in the labor force. We pool the six-year pseudopanels and examine the effects of aggregate employment conditions on wives’ transition to the labor force. A worsening of unemployment conditions has a small discouraging effect on wives’ labor-supply responses.

Socioeconomic Determinants of Divorce in Sweden, 1960–1965

During the 1960s in Sweden, socioeconomic differentials decreased sharply and both the labor force participation of married women and aggregate divorce rates increased more rapidly than during any other period of the twentieth century. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the socioeconomic composition of the couple influenced the probability of divorce during this period of rapid restructuring. The study uses a large data set covering the entire married population of Sweden in 1960 and applies a binary model whereby the couples are analyzed as units rather than separate individuals to model divorce during the period from 1960 to1965. The main results show that the equalization process between genders and social classes during this period contributed to the decrease in marital stability. Dual-provider families exhibit substantially higher probabilities of divorce as compared to traditional single-provider families. We also find that the socioeconomic gradient of divorce had become negative by the early 1960s and that couples with low socioeconomic status contributed more to the increase in divorce than did couples in the higher strata. A difference between the results reached in this study and those from divorce research covering later decades is that children do not reduce the probability of divorce when the wife's labor force participation is controlled for. The results indicate that the determinants of divorce have varied across different phases of the divorce transition during the twentieth century and that a historical perspective is necessary if we are to understand the long-term process that has produced current marital behavior.

Heterogeneous Impact of Taiwan's National Health Insurance on Labor Force Participation of Married Women by Income and Family Structures

In this study, I investigate how the impact of the National Health Insurance (NHI) introduction in Taiwan in 1995 on the labor force participation (LFP) decisions of married women varies with income and family structures. Employing the difference-in-differences (DID) approach, I find that the NHI introduction reduced LFP of married women in the twenty-fifth to fiftieth percentiles of the income distribution between 17.8 and 21.7 percentage points (33%–40%). The difference-in-differences-in-differences (DIDID) results suggest that married women in different family structures (the presence of children under 3 or less healthy elderly household members) did not respond differently to the NHI introduction.

Dynamic model of childbearing and labor force participation of married women: Empirical evidence from Korea and Japan

The purpose of this study is the empirical investigation of childbirth behavior and labor-force participation of married women in South Korea and Japan. A dynamic discrete choice model is estimated using microdata from household surveys in South Korea and Japan. Estimation results suggest that: (1) only a second child is beneficial and others are not in the case of Korea, although any child is beneficial in the case of Japan; (2) nursing a newborn is considerably costly; (3) without considering an earnings effect, low-earnings jobs are costly in both countries, although high-earnings jobs are beneficial in Japan; and (4) the probability of finding a full-time position for married women after career interruption is estimated as 5–28%.

Trends in the Labor Force Participation of Married Women

This study seeks to quantify determinants, and costs, of the labor-force participation of married women. We use demographic and earnings data from the Health and Retirement Study. The earnings data constitute an unusually long panel but have the defect of lacking corresponding reports on work hours. By using a highly structured model and concentrating on the participation margin, we nevertheless feel that we can make substantial progress. Our preliminary regression results imply that married women's market work disrupts their household consumption slightly less than one half as much as men's work (relative to complete household retirement). We lay out a course of additional steps that can, we believe, clarify these results even more precisely in the near future.

Casais na Grande São Paulo: investigando a diversidade

As elevadas heterogeneidade e instabilidade caracterizam o mercado de trabalho no Brasil. Ademais, o processo de crescimento da participação das mulheres na força de trabalho tem sido puxado pelas casadas, o que significa que estão sendo alterados os papéis femininos nas famílias e na sociedade. Este estudo investiga as combinações entre características, ocupacionais e não-ocupacionais, do "chefe da família" e do seu respectivo "cônjuge", como forma de obter inferências sobre o bem-estar familiar. A base de dados utilizada é a Pesquisa de Mobilidade Ocupacional aliada à Pesquisa de Emprego e Desemprego da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo, de abril-dezembro de 2001. Foram construídas tipologias por meio do Grade of Membership, método que trata a heterogeneidade de modo mais adequado. Constatou-se a grande heterogeneidade dos casamentos. Idade, escolaridade e estratégias econômicas dos esposos, em especial quanto à participação da cônjuge no mercado de trabalho, constituem fatores determinantes para distinguir os casais.

Measuring the effect of husband's health on wife's labor supply

A sizable proportion of women remain married well into late life and an increasing proportion of them participate in the labor force. Since women tend to marry men older than themselves and men tend to experience serious illnesses at younger ages than women, women frequently witness declining health in their husbands. This is likely to affect a wife's labor-leisure trade-off in offsetting ways. Prior studies have not sought to disentangle the effect of a husband's poor health on his wife's reservation wage from the income effect of his ill health. We argue that, if we control for husband's earnings, the coefficient of husband's health in models of his wife's labor force participation (and hours of work) will reflect, in part, her preference over whether to decrease her labor supply to provide health care for her husband or whether to instead increase it to purchase this care in the market. However, husband's earnings are likely to be endogenous in these models due to unobserved characteristics common to husbands and wives. We find that the estimated effect of husband's health depends on whether we instrument for husband's earnings and on the health measure used. This is indicative of the importance of using a variety of health measures and controlling for husband's earnings, and their endogeneity, in future research on the effect of husband's health on wife's labor supply.

The Relationship Between Wife’s Education and Husband’s Earnings: Evidence from 1960 to 2000

Previous research finds a positive relationship between a wife’s education and her husband’s earnings using data from the 1960s. Earlier theories suggest that benefits accrue from informational sharing between partners in a marriage. This paper tests the hypothesis that a wife’s education is positively associated with her husband’s earnings, using data from the 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses. Between 1960 and 2000, the educational attainment and labor-force participation of married women has increased dramatically. As women have embarked upon their own careers, has their education continued to be positively associated with their husbands’ earnings? Yes. The coefficient of the wife’s education remains positive and significant for all the years under study. The size of the coefficient decreases, however, from 1960 to 2000.

Do Mothers Work to Support Ailing Husbands?

This paper analyzes the role of a spouse's poor health in forming the mother's labor force participation decision. The data are drawn from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which follows individuals for four years. This paper uses a medical expenditure approach to measuring health. Because SIPP is a panel dataset, changes in health and labor force participation can be observed. This paper finds an increase of 8% in the wife's labor force participation when the health of the spouse falls from excellent to poor. This result of the changes in the mother's labor force participation is consistent with previous literature, indicating that this new health measure performed well.

Family migration and the labour-force participation of married women in the Netherlands, 1977–1996

This paper examines the effects of long-distance migration on the labour-force participation of married women in the Netherlands using data from the 1977 and 1995/96 labour-force surveys. The results show that married women who migrated in the year before the interview to another province participated less in paid employment than other married women. The negative effect on the wife's employment is stronger for longer moves (crossing at least two provincial boundaries) than for shorter ones (over one provincial boundary) and was somewhat weaker in 1995/96 than in 1977. The strength of the migration effect also varies among different groups of married women. In 1995/96, women with a high educational level and women who live in the Randstad experienced less negative effects of migration. At the same time, the negative effects of migration were stronger for women with children at home and for women whose husbands held prestigious jobs. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Family migration and the labour-force participation of married women in the Netherlands, 1977-1996.

This paper analyzes the effects of long-distance migration on the labor-force participation of married women in the Netherlands by using data from the Dutch Labour-Force Surveys for the years 1977 and 1995-96. This study included married and cohabiting women aged 22-59 years. The purpose of this analysis was to gain more insight into the factors that determine whether or not these highly motivated women re-enter the labor market after the move. Results showed that married women who migrated in the year before the interview to another province had lesser participation in paid employment than other married women. Moreover, long distance migration negatively affects the labor-force participation of married women in the Netherlands. The intensity of the migration effect also differs among different groups of married women. The data from 1995-96 demonstrated that women with higher education and women who live in Randstad experienced less negative effects of migration. On the contrary, women with children at home and women whose husbands occupied higher job positions experienced stronger negative effects of migration.

Wives' earnings and the level and distribution of married couples' earnings in developed countries

This study examines the contribution of wives' earnings to the distribution of married couples' earnings in 10 developed countries. There is substantial variation among countries in wives' labor force participation, the relative earnings of husbands and wives, the distribution of earnings, and the correlation of spouses' earnings. Even though these countries differ on these dimensions, wives' earnings mitigate inequality in the earnings of married couples. For the countries we are able to analyze over time, the labor force participation of wives married to high earning husbands increased more than the labor force participation of wives married to middle-earning men. Despite this trend, the mitigating effect of wives' earnings actually increased slightly in all countries examined. Moreover, all other things equal, the correlation of spouses' earnings would have to experience an unprecedented increase in order for wives' earnings to become disequalizing.

Wife's Labor Force Participation and Family Expenditures for Prepared Food, Food Prepared at Home, and Food Away from Home

This study examines the effects of a wife's participation in the labor force and other socioeconomic factors on family expenditures for prepared food, food prepared at home, and food away from home using the Bureau of Labor Statistics 1992 consumer expenditure survey. On the one hand, results indicate that the number of children, home ownership with mortgage, seasonality, region, wife's age, and income are important determinants of expenditures on food prepared at home. A wife's education and participation in the labor force, on the other hand, affect expenditures on prepared food and food away from home. The impact of both these factors is greater on food away from home than on prepared food expenditures.

Effects of Occupational Status Differences between Spouses on the Wife's Labor Force Participation and Occupational Achievement: Findings from 12 European Countries

Effects of occupational status differences between spouses on the wife's employment and on her occupational achievement are studied for the coun- tries of the European Union. The results show a tendency towards similarity in occupational sta- tus within marriages. Labor force participation of a wife is highest when her potential occupational status equals her husband's occupational status. Furthermore, the husband's occupation produces both a ceiling effect and a facilitating effect on the wife's occupational achievement. The strength of these effects differs somewhat between the countries. For a wife's participation in the labor force, these differences are related to the country's dominant religion.

Social/institutional variables and behavior within households: An empirical test using the Luxembourg income study

High on the research agenda of feminist economists is the development of better models of what goes on within families. This paper contributes by conducting empirical tests of the impact of social/institutional factors on behavior within marriage. As one example, “divorce-threat” bargaining models predict that greater certainty of receiving child support should increase a woman's bargaining power within a marriage and hence observable behavioral outcomes. Within a single country, there is limited variation in the social/institutional factors which might affect bargaining power, but across countries identifying variation can be found. Thus, we use a micro-data set constructed using seven countries from the Luxembourg Income Study database in order to estimate a probit model of the labor-force participation of married women. Our conclusions suggest that, contrary to the predictions of Becker-style unitary models, some social/institutional factors do influence individual behavior within the household.

Ireland: A Private Patriarchy?

Ireland has recently been characterised as a country dominated by private patriarchy. One indicator of private patriarchy is the incidence of women engaged in full-time ‘home duties’ rather than in paid employment. The participation of women in the Irish labour force has been comparatively very low because the majority of married women in Ireland are full-time housewives. Persistently high fertility rates—in 1987 the highest in Europe—and a state ideology which enshrined women's position in the home explained this phenomenon in the past. One might have expected industrialisation to have promoted greater change, yet its influence was minimal. Early industrialisation did not create a demand for female labour. In the 1960s export-oriented industrialisation generated a demand for female labour but this was obstructed by patriarchal state policy. In the 1970s, EU membership removed many legislative restrictions on the labour-force participation of married women. However, a patriarchal family based taxation policy and the absence of state supported child care still perpetuate private patriarchy in Ireland.

Retirement Prospects of the Baby Boom Generation: A Different Perspective

We examine the average economic status of baby boom cohorts as they approach retirement chiefly using data on their life cycle income experience to date. Contrary to popular impression, baby boomers are likely to enter old age in an even better economic position than pre-boom cohorts. Economic and demographic adjustments that they made, such as deferred marriages, reduced childbearing, and increased labor force participation of wives, have compensated for their relatively low wage rates. Potential downside effects of reduced childbearing regarding Social Security and health care prospects are discussed.