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Modelling the Employment and Wage Outcomes of Spouses: Is She Outearning Him?

Author

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  • Bloemen, Hans

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Stancanelli, Elena G. F.

    (Paris School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper is focused on couple households where the wife is the main earner. The economic literature on this subject is particularly scant. According to our estimates, the wife was the main earner in one of every six couple households in France in 2002, including wife-sole-earner households. The proportion of wives outearning their husbands was 18% for dual-earners. About 24% of American women in dual-earner households earned more than their husband in 2004. Using a model of household labour supply behaviour, we show that households where the wife is the main earner may come about either because the husband has a weaker preference for work than his wife, due possibly to her high wage, or because he is hit by adverse circumstances, such as, for example, a decline in the demand for men with his particular qualifications. Positive assortative mating may also come into play. Our empirical model specifies spouse labour-market participation equations within each household, endogenizing wages and allowing for random effects and correlations in spouses’ unobservables. We conclude that the determinants of wife-sole-earner households are quite distinct from those for dual-earner households where she outearns him. The probability of observing the first seems to be more related to labour market difficulties of the husband, while the latter is not. Dual-earners where she outearns him are more likely to be found among higher educated couples, and especially, among couple where the wife’s education level is high.

Suggested Citation

  • Bloemen, Hans & Stancanelli, Elena G. F., 2008. "Modelling the Employment and Wage Outcomes of Spouses: Is She Outearning Him?," IZA Discussion Papers 3455, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3455
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Patricia Apps & Ray Rees, 2005. "Gender, Time Use, and Public Policy over the Life Cycle," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 21(3), pages 439-461, Autumn.
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    6. Stancanelli, Elena G.F., 2008. "Evaluating the impact of the French tax credit on the employment rate of women," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2036-2047, October.
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    12. Elena Stancanelli, 2008. "Evaluating the impact of the French tax credit on the employment rate of women," Post-Print hal-03417077, HAL.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hani Mansour & Terra McKinnish, 2011. "Who Marries Differently-Aged Spouses?: Earnings, Ability and Appearance," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1123, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Pierre-André Chiappori & Murat Iyigun & Yoram Weiss, 2009. "Investment in Schooling and the Marriage Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1689-1713, December.
    3. Zeenat Soobedar, 2011. "A semiparametric analysis of the rising breadwinner role of women in the UK," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 415-428, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    household economics; work behaviour; marriage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

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