IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0668.html

Wives' Labor Force Participation, Wage Differentials and Family Income Inequality: The Israeli Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Reuben Gronau

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the labor force participation of married women. The paper investigates the effect of wives' earnings on family income distribution. This effect depends on the in-equality of women's earnings as compared with other sources of income, on the correlation between the two and on the woman's share in total income. These in turn depend on participation patterns, labor supply and sex related wage differentials. In general, only the correlation between the various sources of income has an unambiguous effect on inequality, the effects of the other factors depending on the specific values of the parameters. In Israel where there are sharp differences in participation rates of married women and in sex related earnings differentials by schooling group, wives' earnings reduce total family income inequality, increasing at the same time the between-group (ethnic and schooling group) variability. The paper examines the effect of changes in the participation rate and the wife-husband earnings gap on family income inequality. It compares the effect of wives' earnings with other income sources (e.g., transfers) and examines the implication of separate tax returns for inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Reuben Gronau, 1981. "Wives' Labor Force Participation, Wage Differentials and Family Income Inequality: The Israeli Experience," NBER Working Papers 0668, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0668
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0668.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Layard, Richard & Zabalza, Antoni, 1979. "Family Income Distribution: Explanation and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 133-161, October.
    2. Benham, Lee, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 57-71, Part II, .
    3. James Heckman, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    4. Lee Benham, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility, pages 57-75, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling and Earnings," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 41-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc74-1, August.
    7. Smith, James P, 1979. "The Distribution of Family Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 163-192, October.
    8. Gronau, Reuben, 1980. "Home Production-A Forgotten Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 62(3), pages 408-416, August.
    9. Lee Benham, 1974. "Benefits of Women's Education within Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 375-394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Shoshana Grossbard-Shechtman & Xuanning Fu, 2002. "Women's Labor Force Participation and Status Exchange in Intermarriage: A Model and Evidence for Hawaii 1," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 241-268, October.

    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. Åström, Johanna, 2011. "The Effects of Spousal Education on Individual Earnings – A Study of Married Swedish Couples," HUI Working Papers 32, HUI Research.
    2. Jeroen Smits, 2001. "Career Migration, Self-selection and the Earnings of Married Men and Women in the Netherlands, 1981-93," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 38(3), pages 541-562, March.
    3. Chong Huang & Hongbin Li & Pak Wai Liu & Junsen Zhang, 2009. "Why Does Spousal Education Matter for Earnings? Assortative Mating and Cross-Productivity," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(4), pages 633-652, October.
    4. Lisa Jepsen, 2005. "The Relationship Between Wife’s Education and Husband’s Earnings: Evidence from 1960 to 2000," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 197-214, June.
    5. Åström, Johanna, 2009. "The Effects of Assortative Mating on Earnings: Human Capital Spillover or Specialization?," HUI Working Papers 34, HUI Research.
    6. Francesconi, Marco & Brynin, Malcolm, 2002. "The material returns to partnership: the effects of educational matching on labour market outcomes and gender equality," ISER Working Paper Series 2002-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    7. Kantarevic, Jasmin, 2004. "Interethnic Marriages and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants," IZA Discussion Papers 1142, IZA Network @ LISER.
    8. Mohammad Niaz Asadullah, 2006. "Returns to Education in Bangladesh," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 453-468.
    9. John Pencavel, 2006. "A Life Cycle Perspective on Changes in Earnings Inequality among Married Men and Women," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 232-242, May.
    10. John Pencavel, 2007. "Earnings Inequality, Labour Supply And Schooling In Husband–Wife Families," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 83-124, April.
    11. repec:qeh:qehwps:qehwps130 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Grossman, Michael, 2006. "Education and Nonmarket Outcomes," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 577-633, Elsevier.
    13. Joachim Merz, 1993. "Market and Non-market Labor Supply and Recent German Tax Reform Impacts - Behavioral Response in a Combined Dynamic and Static Microsimulation Model," FFB-Discussionpaper 06, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)), LEUPHANA University Lüneburg.
    14. Sandra Nieto & Raúl Ramos, 2013. "Non-Formal Education, Overeducation And Wages," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 21(1), pages 5-28, Spring.
    15. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4924 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Rosen, Harvey S, 1982. "Taxation and On-the-Job Training Decisions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(3), pages 442-449, August.
    17. Xavier Ramos Morilla & Josep Lluís Raymond Bara & Josep Oliver Alonso, 1999. "Not All University Degrees Yield the Same Return: Private and Social Returns to Higher Education for Males in Spain," Working Papers wpdea9904, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    18. P.W. Miller & S. Rummery, 1989. "Gender Wage Discrimination in Australia: A reassessment," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 89-21, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    19. Michael Fertig & Katja Görlitz, 2012. "Item Nonresponse in Wages: Testing for Biased Estimates in Wage Equations," Ruhr Economic Papers 0333, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    20. Arthur Charpentier & Emmanuel Flachaire & Antoine Ly, 2017. "Econom\'etrie et Machine Learning," Papers 1708.06992, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2018.
    21. Luis Eduardo Arango & Diana Carolina Escobar & Emma Mercedes Monsalve, 2013. "Subempleo por ingresos y funcionamiento del mercado de trabajo en Colombia," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    22. Lucia Mateos & Ines Murillo & Maria del Mar Salinas, 2014. "Desajuste educativo y competencias cognitivas: efectos sobre los salarios," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 210(3), pages 85-108, September.

    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:nbr:nberwo:0668. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.