Marriage, Labor Supply, and Home Production

Marion Goussé (1) , Nicolas Jacquemet (2, 3) , Jean-Marc Robin (4, 5)

1 ULaval - Université Laval [Québec]
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
4 ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po)
5 UCL - University College of London [London]

We develop a search model of marriage where men and women draw utility from private consumption and leisure, and from a non-market good that is produced in the home using time resources. We condition individual decisions on wages, education, and an index of family attitudes. A match-specific, stochastic bliss shock induces variation in matching given wages, education, and family values, and triggers renegotiation and divorce. Using BHPS (1991–2008) data, we take as given changes in wages, education, and family values by gender, and study their impact on marriage decisions and intra-household resource allocation. The model allows to evaluate how much of the observed gender differences in labor supply results from wages, education, and family attitudes. We find that family attitudes are a strong determinant of comparative advantages in home production of men and women, whereas education complementarities induce assortative mating through preferences.

Mots clés: structural estimation; gender identity; Search-matching; bargaining; assortative mating; collective models; time uses; social norms

Domaines: Economies et finances

Marion Goussé, Nicolas Jacquemet, Jean-Marc Robin. Marriage, Labor Supply, and Home Production. Econometrica, 2017, 85 (6), pp.1873 - 1919. ⟨10.3982/ECTA11221⟩. ⟨halshs-01689155⟩