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Culture and Household Decision Making. Balance of Power and Labor Supply Choices of US-Born and Foreign-Born Couples

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  • Sonia Oreffice

Abstract

This study investigates how spouses’ cultural backgrounds mediate the role of intra-household bargaining in the labor supply decisions of foreign-born and US-born couples, in a collective-household framework. Using data from the 2000 US Census, I show that the hours worked by US-born couples, and by those foreign-born coming from countries with gender roles similar to the US, are significantly related to common bargaining power forces such as differences between spouses in age and non-labor income, controlling for both spouses’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Households whose culture of origin supports strict and unequal gender roles do not exhibit any association of these power factors with their labor supply decisions. This cultural asymmetry suggests that spousal attributes are assessed differently across couples within the US, and that how spouses make use of their outside opportunities and economic and institutional environment may depend on their ethnicities. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

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  • Sonia Oreffice, 2014. "Culture and Household Decision Making. Balance of Power and Labor Supply Choices of US-Born and Foreign-Born Couples," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 162-184, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jlabre:v:35:y:2014:i:2:p:162-184
    DOI: 10.1007/s12122-014-9177-5
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    Cited by:

    1. Amábile Florencia, 2023. "Collective Labor Supply, Divisions of Domestic Work and Intra-household Bargaining," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4624, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    2. Victor Gay & Daniel L. Hicks & Estefania Santacreu-Vasut & Amir Shoham, 2018. "Decomposing culture: an analysis of gender, language, and labor supply in the household," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 879-909, December.
    3. Miriam Marcén & Marina Morales, 2019. "Live together: does culture matter?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 671-713, June.
    4. Yunsun Huh, 2018. "Family typology and gender empowerment: the labour market performance of married immigrants," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 237-288, September.
    5. Mahmoud Salari, 2020. "Culture and heritage language: a study of female labor force participation," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 285-306, June.
    6. Olivier Donni & Eleonora Matteazzi, 2018. "Collective decisions, household production, and labor force participation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(7), pages 1064-1080, November.
    7. Zicheng Wang & Yun Lou & Yi Zhou, 2020. "Bargaining Power or Specialization? Determinants of Household Decision Making in Chinese Rural Migrant Families," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, December.
    8. Johannes Koeckeis, 2022. "Intra-Household Inequality and Tax Planning of Same-Sex Couples," GRAPE Working Papers 73, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Culture; Gender roles; Household bargaining power; Labor supply; JEL Classification; D1; J15; J22;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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