IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/44y2012i19p2499-2516.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marriage, cohabitation and women's response to changes in the male wage structure

Author

Listed:
  • Ren頍orissette
  • Yuqian Lu
  • Feng Hou

Abstract

Using microdata and grouped data that cover the period 1996 to 2006, we assess the extent to which cohabiting women adjust their labour supply to a lesser extent, if any, than married women in response to changes in male wages. Both microdata regressions and grouping estimators unambiguously indicate that cohabiting women respond less to variation in male wages than married women. However, the magnitude of the difference is not sizeable. We also assess the magnitude of married men's and cohabiting men's own wage elasticities and find that they do not differ much. Combined with the fact that male earnings account for roughly two-thirds of family earnings, these two findings explain why the impact of changes in male wages on family earnings is very similar for married couples and cohabiting couples: in both cases, a 10% decline in male wages appears to induce roughly a 6% drop in family earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Ren頍orissette & Yuqian Lu & Feng Hou, 2012. "Marriage, cohabitation and women's response to changes in the male wage structure," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(19), pages 2499-2516, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:19:p:2499-2516
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.566180
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2011.566180
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2011.566180?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2007. "Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980–2000," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(3), pages 393-438.
    2. Melvin Stephens, 2002. "Worker Displacement and the Added Worker Effect," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(3), pages 504-537, July.
    3. René Morissette & Feng Hou, 2008. "Does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands' wages? Canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1185-1210, November.
    4. Paul J. Devereux, 2004. "Changes in Relative Wages and Family Labor Supply," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(3).
    5. Angrist, Joshua D., 1991. "Grouped-data estimation and testing in simple labor-supply models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2-3), pages 243-266, February.
    6. Inmaculada Garcia & Jose Alberto Molina & Victor Manuel Montuenga, 2010. "Intra-family distribution of paid-work time," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 589-601.
    7. Xiaodi Xie, 1997. "Children and female labour supply behaviour," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(10), pages 1303-1310.
    8. Daron Acemoglu & David H. Autor & David Lyle, 2004. "Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Midcentury," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 497-551, June.
    9. Matthijs Kalmijn & Anneke Loeve & Dorien Manting, 2007. "Income dynamics in couples and the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 44(1), pages 159-179, February.
    10. Inmaculada Garcia & Jose Alberto Molina, 1998. "Household labour supply with rationing in Spain," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(12), pages 1557-1570.
    11. Paul J. Devereux, 2007. "Small-sample bias in synthetic cohort models of labor supply," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 839-848.
    12. René Morissette & Feng Hou, 2008. "Does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands' wages? Canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(4), pages 1185-1210, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doreen Triebe, 2013. "Wo(men) at Work?: The Impact of Cohabiting and Married Partners' Earning on Women's Work Hours," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 614, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Doreen Triebe, 2015. "The Added Worker Effect Differentiated by Gender and Partnership Status: Evidence from Involuntary Job Loss," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 740, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hou, Feng & Lu, Yuqian & Morissette, René, 2009. "Marriage, Cohabitation and Women’s Response to Changes in the Male Wage Structure," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2009-45, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 30 Aug 2009.
    2. René Morissette & Feng Hou, 2008. "Does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands' wages? Canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(4), pages 1185-1210, November.
    3. Benoit Dostie, 2012. "Labour Supply and Taxes: New Estimates of the Responses of Wives to Husbands’ Wages," Cahiers de recherche 12-02, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
    4. Lusi Liao & Sasiwimon Warunsiri Paweenawat, 2018. "Labour Supply of Married Women in Thailand: 1985–2016," PIER Discussion Papers 88, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Devereux, Paul J., 2007. "Improved Errors-in-Variables Estimators for Grouped Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 278-287, July.
    6. Abe, Yukiko, 2011. "The Equal Employment Opportunity Law and labor force behavior of women in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 39-55, March.
    7. Hryshko, Dmytro & Juhn, Chinhui & McCue, Kristin, 2017. "Trends in earnings inequality and earnings instability among U.S. couples: How important is assortative matching?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 168-182.
    8. René Morissette & Ping Ching Winnie Chan & Yuqian Lu, 2015. "Wages, Youth Employment, and School Enrollment: Recent Evidence from Increases in World Oil Prices," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(1), pages 222-253.
    9. Anil Kumar, 2016. "Lifecycle-consistent female labor supply with nonlinear taxes: evidence from unobserved effects panel data models with censoring, selection and endogeneity," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 207-229, March.
    10. Paul J. Devereux, 2007. "Small-sample bias in synthetic cohort models of labor supply," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 839-848.
    11. Lusi Liao & Sasiwimon Warunsiri Paweenawat, 2021. "The inversion of married women's labour supply and wage: Evidence from Thailand," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 35(1), pages 82-98, May.
    12. Abe, Yukiko & Tamada, Keiko, 2010. "Regional patterns of employment changes of less-educated men in Japan: 1990-2007," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 69-79, March.
    13. Stevenson, Adam, 2012. "The Labor Supply and Tax Revenue Consequences of Federal Same-Sex Marriage Legalization," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 783-806, December.
    14. Antecol, Heather & Steinberger, Michael D., 2009. "Female Labor Supply Differences by Sexual Orientation: A Semi-Parametric Decomposition Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 4029, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Wen Hao Chen & Michael F rster & Ana Llena-Nozal, 2013. "Determinants of Household Earnings Inequality: The Role of Labour Market Trends and Changing Household Structure," LIS Working papers 591, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    16. Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen, 2013. "Assortative Mating and Female Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(3), pages 603-631.
    17. Lu, Yuqian & Chan, Winnie & Morissette, Rene, 2014. "Wages, Youth Employment, and School Enrollment: Recent Evidence from Increases in World Oil Prices," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2014353e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    18. Abe, Yukiko, 2012. "A cohort analysis of male labor supply in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 23-43.
    19. Tanja Fendel, 2020. "How Elastic is the Labour Supply of Female Migrants Relative to the Labour Supply of Female Natives?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 168(4), pages 475-517, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:19:p:2499-2516. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.