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Till mess do us part: Married women's market hours, home production, and divorce

Author

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  • García-Morán, Eva
  • Kuehn, Zoe

Abstract

Part time jobs facilitate the conciliation of work and family life. But they entail reduced returns to experience and translate into lower own income in case of divorce. Given non-trivial divorce risks, why do married women work so little? Using micro data for Germany, we show married mothers' market hours (hours dedicated to housework) to be positively (negatively) related to separations. We then propose a dynamic life-cycle model of mothers' labor force participation, home production, and endogenous divorce which we calibrate to German data. Making divorce exogenous or ruling out divorce leads to an overestimation of the share of married mothers working full time and an underestimation of their housework and child care time, particularly among medium and highly educated women. Carrying out three policy experiments (increasing alimony, eliminating joint taxation, subsidizing child care) we highlight how couples' considerations of divorce risks condition the effects of such policies on married mothers' market hours.

Suggested Citation

  • García-Morán, Eva & Kuehn, Zoe, 2023. "Till mess do us part: Married women's market hours, home production, and divorce," MPRA Paper 119324, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:119324
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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