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

García-Morán, Eva and Kuehn, Zoe (2023): Till mess do us part: Married women's market hours, home production, and divorce.

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.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: female labor force participation, home production, divorce
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H42 - Publicly Provided Private Goods; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J12 - Marriage ; Marital Dissolution ; Family Structure ; Domestic Abuse; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

References

Alesina, Alberto; Ichino, Andrea and Loukas Karabarbounis (2011): “Gender- Based Taxation and the Division of Family Chores,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 3(2), pp. 1-40.

Andrews, Dan and Aida Caldera Sanchez (2011): “The Evolution of Homeownership Rates in Selected OECD Countries: Demographic and Public Policy Influences,” OECD Journal: Economic Studies, Vol. 2011/1, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris.

Bargain, Olivier; Gonzalez, Libertad; Keane, Claire and Berkay Ozcan (2012): “Female labor supply and divorce: New evidence from Ireland,” European Economic Review, 56, pp. 1675-1691.

Beblo, Miriam and Elke Wolf (2000): “How much does a year off cost? Estimating the wage effects of employment breaks and part-time periods,” ZEW Discussion Papers,No.00-69.

Becker, Gary S.; Landes, Elisabeth M. and Robert T. Michael (1977): “An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability,” Journal of Political Economy, 85(6), pp.1141-1187.

Bertrand, Marianne; Kamenica, Emir and Jessica Pan (2015): “Gender Identity and relative Income within Households,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), pp. 571-614.

Bick, Alexander and Nicola Fuchs-Schuendeln (2018): “Taxation and Labor Supply of Married Couples across Countries: A Macroeconomic Analysis,” Review of Economic Studies, 85(3), pp. 1543-1576.

Bittman, Michael; England, Paula; Sayer, Liana; Folbre, Nancy and George Matheson (2003): “When Does Gender Trump Money? Bargaining and Time in Household Work,” American Journal of Sociology, 109(1), pp. 186-214.

Blossfeld Hans-Peter and Andreas Timm (2003): Who Marries Whom? Educational Systems as Marriage Markets in Modern Societies, Springer Science & Business Media.

Bremmer, Dale and Randy Kesselring (2004): “Divorce and female labor force participation: Evidence from Time-series data and cointegration,” Atlantic Economic Journal, 32(3), pp. 175-190.

Bredtmann, Julia and Christina Vonnahme (2019): “Less money after divorce? How the 2008 alimony reform in Germany affected spouses’ labor supply, leisure and marital stability,” Review of Economics of the Householdl, 17(4), pp. 1191-1223.

Bundesministerium fuer Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (2005): Gender-Datenreport, 1. Datenreport zur Gleichstellung von Frauen und Maennern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Muenchen.

Chakraborty, Indraneel; Holter, Hans A. and Serhiy Stepanchuck (2015):“Marriage stability, taxation and aggregate labor supply in the US vs. Europe,” Journal of Monetary Economics 72, pp. 1-20.

Cherlin Andrew (1977): “The effect of children on marital dissolution,” Demography, 14(3), pp 265-272.

Chiappori, Pierre-Andre; Iyigun, Murat; Lafortune, Jeanne and Yoram Weiss (2017): “Changing the rules midway: The impact of granting alimony rights on existing and newly formed partnerships,” Economic Journal, 127, pp. 1874-1905.

Cooke, Lynn Prince (2006): ““Doing” Gender in Context: Household Bargaining and Risk of Divorce in Germany and the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 112(2), pp. 442-472.

Cutler, David M. and Lawrence Katz (1992): “Rising Inequality? Changes in the Distribution of Income and Consumption in the 1980s,” American Economic Review, 82(2), pp. 546-551.

del Boca, Daniela and Daniela Vuri (2007): “The mismatch between employment and child care in Italy: the impact of rationing,” Journal of Population Economics, 20(4), pp 805-832.

Eckstein Zvi; Keane, Michael and Osnat Lifshitz (2019): “Career and Family Decisions: Cohorts born 1935-1975,” Econometrica, 87(1), pp 217-253. Eckstein, Zvi and Osnat Lifshitz (2011): “Dynamic Female Labor Supply,” Econometrica, 79(6), pp 1675-1726.

Economist, The(2019):“Balancing Act: Part-time jobs help women stay in paid work,” Sep 5th 2019.

Eurostat (2015): “Gender pay gap in unadjusted form.”

Ferber, Marianne A. and Jane Waldfogel (1998): “The long-term consequences of nontraditional employment,” Monthly Labor Review, 121(5) pp. 3-12.

Fernandez, Raquel and Joyce Wong (2017): “Free to Leave? A Welfare Analysis of Divorce Regimes,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 9(3), pp. 72-115.

Fernandez, Raquel and Joyce Wong (2014): “Divorce Risk, Wages, and Working Wives: A Quantitative Life-Cycle Analysis of Female Labour Force Participation,” Economic Journal, 124(576), pp. 319-358.

Geisler, Esther; Koeppen, Katja; Kreyenfeld, Michaela; Trappe, Heike and Matthias Pollmann-Schult (2016): “Familien nach Trennung und Scheidung in Deutschland,” Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Demographie.

Greenwood, Jeremy; Guner, Nezih; Kocharkov, Georgi and Cezar Santos (2016): “Technology and the Changing Family: A Unified Model of Marriage, Divorce, Educational Attainment, and Married Female Labor-Force Participation,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2016, 8(1), pp. 1-41.

Guner, Nezih; Kaygusuz, Remzi and Gustavo Ventura (2012): “ Taxation and Household Labour Supply,” Review of Economic Studies, 79(3), pp 1113-1149.

Hank, Karsten and Michaela Kreyenfeld (2003): “A Multilevel Analysis of Child Care and Women’s Fertility Decisions in Western Germany,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, pp. 584-596.

Holter, Hans A.; Krueger, Dirk and Serhiy Stepanchuk (2019): “How Do Tax Progressivity and Household Heterogeneity Affect Laffer Curves?, ” Quantitative Economics, 10, pp. 1317-1356.

Johnson, William R. and Jonathan Skinner (1986): “Labor Supply and Marital Separation,” American Economic Review, 76(3), pp. 455-469.

Knowles, John (2013): “Why are Married Men Working So Much?,” Review of Economic Studies, 80, pp 1055-1085.

Kraft, Kornelius and Stefanie Neimann (2009): “Effect of labor division between wife and husband on the risk of divorce; Evidence from German data,” SOEPpapers 223.

Mazzocco, Maurizio; Ruiz, Claudia and Shintaro Yamaguchi (2013): “Labor Supply, Wealth Dynamics, and Marriage Decisions,” mimeo.

Newman, Andrew F. and Claudia Olivetti (2015): “Career Women and the Durability of Marriage,” mimeo.

OECD (2010): “Country statistical profile: Germany 2010,” OECDiLibrary, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris.

OECD (2008a): “OECD Economic Surveys: Germany,” Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris.

OECD (2002): “Germany Country chapter,” Benefits and Wages, OECD series, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris.

Papps, Kerry L. (2006): “The Effects of Divorce Risks on the Labor Supply of Married Couples,” IZA Discussion Paper, No. 2395.

Rangel, Marcos A. (2006): “Alimony rights and intrahousehold allocation of resources: Evidence from Brazil,” Economic Journal, 116, pp. 627-658.

Rosenfeld, Michael J. (2018): “Who wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples,” Chapter 11 in Social networks and the life course: Integrating the development of human lives and social relational networks edited by Duane F. Alwin, Diane Felmlee, and Derek Kreager, Springer International Publishing.

Social Security Administration (2014): “Income of the Population 55 or Older, 2014, Poverty Status of Aged Persons based on Family Income,” US Social Security Administration.

Statistisches Bundesamt (2015a): “Tageseinrichtungen f¨ur Kinder nach Art der Plaetze und Platz-Kind Relation nach Laendern,” Statististik der Kinder-und Jugendhilfe, available upon request for years 1990 (West), 1991 (East), 1998 (Total) and 2002 (Total).

Statistisches Bundesamt (2015b): “Wirtschaftsrechnungen, Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichprobe Aufwendungen privater Haushalte fuer den Privaten Konsum 2013” Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden 2015.

Stevenson, Betsey (2008): “Divorce Law and Women’s Labor Supply,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 5(4), pp. 853-873.

Stevenson, Betsey and Justin Wolfers (2007): “Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2), pp. 27-52.

Wolf, Elke (2002): “Lower wage rates for fewer hours? A simultaneous wage-hours model for Germany,” Labour Economics, 9, pp. 643-663.

Voena, Alessandra (2015): “Yours, Mine, and Ours: Do Divorce Laws Affect the Intertemporal Behavior of Married Couples?,” American Economic Review, 105(8), pp. 2295-2332.

Wrohlich, Katharina (2011): “Labor supply and child care choices in a rationed child care market,” DIW Discussion Papers, No. 1169.