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Wage shocks, household labor supply, and income instability

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  • Sisi Zhang

Abstract

Do married couples make joint labor supply decisions in response to each other’s wage shocks? The study on this question aids in understanding the link between the rising income instability and household insurance. Existing studies on household insurance either focus on consumption smoothing and take labor supply as a given, or only focus on wife’s labor responses to husband’s unemployment shocks. This article develops an intra-household insurance model that allows for insurance against permanent and transitory wage shocks from both partners. Estimation using the Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that wife increases labor supply in response to husband’s adverse wage shocks when both of them are working, and wife gets more nonlabor income when she is out of work. This intra-household insurance reduces earnings instability by about 2 to 9 %. These results suggest that joint labor supply decisions provide an extra smoothing effect on income instability. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

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  • Sisi Zhang, 2014. "Wage shocks, household labor supply, and income instability," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 767-796, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:27:y:2014:i:3:p:767-796
    DOI: 10.1007/s00148-014-0507-y
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    Cited by:

    1. Donni, Olivier & Molina, José Alberto, 2018. "Household Collective Models: Three Decades of Theoretical Contributions and Empirical Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 11915, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Julio Guzman, 2014. "Social Protection and Private Coping Strategies During Recessions: Evidence from Chile," Working Papers wp_041, Adolfo Ibáñez University, School of Government.
    3. Zhu, Mengbing & Xing, Chunbing & Li, Yi, 2023. "Husbands' wages and married women's labor supply in urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Salmon, Claire & Tanguy, Jeremy, 2016. "Rural Electrification and Household Labor Supply: Evidence from Nigeria," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 48-68.
    5. Santoso, Rokhedi Priyo & Sriyana, Jaka, 2020. "The Effect of Idiosyncratic Shocks on Labor Market Outcomes of Informal Households in Indonesia," Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, vol. 54(2), pages 13-27.
    6. Henry R. Hyatt, 2015. "Co-Working Couples and the Similar Jobs of Dual-Earner Households," Working Papers 15-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Bautista Lacambra, Sergio, 2020. "Household labor supply: Collective results for certain developed countries," MPRA Paper 101514, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Household labor supply; Collective model; Permanent shocks; Transitory shocks; Income instability; D12; D13; D81; J22;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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