Cambios en la oferta laboral de la familia limeña

Labor reform, through its effects on the work market adjustment, has determined changes in the capacity of generation of income of the families. Changes in labor legislation's effects over the adjustment of the formal labor market and of the informal sector, affect the access to a remunerated occupation of the individuals, leading to a reassignment of labor resources of the families in an attempt to maintain previous consumption levels. The objective of this work is to analyze changes in labor behavior of families, in a context of relative stagnation of the economic activity, and after a brief period of growth with little employment generation. By means of the data from Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) of 1997, for Lima Metropolitana, we found that the allocation of family labor force between the labor market and domestic activities is determined by differences in sex and in the relative position in the household. By means of LOGIT equations we analyzed the determinants of the labor participation of the heads of the household and spouses. We found that the labor participation of the heads of the household is determined by individual, familiar and economic context variables, whereas the labor participation of the spouses seems to be more influenced by familiar and economic context variables. A fundamental change in the behavior of the spouses is that confronted to a deterioration of the economic context, the spouses' labor behavior is now consistent with the hypothesis of the discouraged worker.