Spousal labour supply and marriage market in Spain

Loren Salas, Alexia (2026): Spousal labour supply and marriage market in Spain.

Abstract

This paper estimates a collective model of household labour supply for married couples in Spain using microdata from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for the period 2005-2019. Following the semilog specification of Chiappori et al. (2002), I estimate labour supply equations for wives and husbands as functions of own wages, partner wages, household non-labour income, and demographic characteristics. The estimated own-wage elasticities are negative for both spouses, indicating that income effects dominate substitution effects. The elasticity is larger in absolute value for wives (−0.38) than for husbands (−0.10), consistent with previous evidence that female labour supply is more responsive to wage changes. Non-labour income of both spouses is negatively associated with hours worked, consistent with the predictions of the collective model regarding the role of distribution factors. These results provide empirical evidence on intrahousehold labour supply dynamics in Spain and contribute to testing collective household models in a Southern European institutional context.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Collective household model; Household labour supply; Labour supply elasticity; Intrahousehold decision-making; Married couples; Wage effects; Spain
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

References

Attanasio, O. P., & Lechene, V. (2014). Efficient responses to targeted cash transfers. Journal of political Economy, 122(1), 178-222.

Becker, G. S. (1993). A treatise on the family: Enlarged edition. Harvard university press.

Belloc, I., & Velilla, J. (2025). Collective intrahousehold labor supply in Europe: Distribution factors and policy implications. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 46(3), 661-684.

Billor, N., Hadi, A. S., & Velleman, P. F. (2000). BACON: blocked adaptive computationally efficient outlier nominators. Computational statistics & data analysis, 34(3), 279-298.

Blundell, R., Pistaferri, L., & Saporta-Eksten, I. (2016). Consumption inequality and family labor supply. American Economic Review, 106(2), 387-435.

Browning, M., Bourguignon, F., Chiappori, P. A., & Lechene, V. (1994). Income and outcomes: A structural model of intrahousehold allocation. Journal of political Economy, 102(6), 1067-1096.

Browning, M., Chiappori, P. A., & Weiss, Y. (2014). Economics of the Family. Cambridge University Press.

Cameron, A. C., & Trivedi, P. K. (2005). Microeconometrics: methods and applications. Cambridge university press.

Campaña, J. C., Giménez-Nadal, J. I., Molina, J. A., & Velilla, J. (2024). The shifters of intrahousehold decision-making in European countries. Empirical Economics, 66(3), 1055-1101.

Chiappori, P. A. (1988). Rational household labor supply. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 63-90.

Chiappori, P. A. (1992). Collective labor supply and welfare. Journal of political Economy, 100(3), 437-467.

Chiappori, P. A., & Ekeland, I. (2009). The microeconomics of efficient group behavior: Identification 1. Econometrica, 77(3), 763-799.

Chiappori, P. A., Fortin, B., & Lacroix, G. (2002). Marriage market, divorce legislation, and household labor supply. Journal of political Economy, 110(1), 37-72.

Chiappori, P. A., Giménez-Nadal, J. I., Molina, J. A., & Velilla, J. (2022). Household labor supply: collective evidence in developed countries. Handbook of labor, human resources and population economics, 1-28.

Chiappori, P.A. & Molina, J.A (2020). The intra-spousal balance of power within the family: cross-cultural evidence. Culture and Families: Research and Practice (Eds. Kim Halford and Fons van de Vijver). Elsevier. Pp. 185-209.

Crespo, L. (2009). Estimation and testing of household labour supply models: evidence from Spain. Investigaciones Económicas, 33(2), 303-335.

Donni, O. & Molina, J.A. (2018). Household Collective Models: Three Decades of Theoretical Contributions and Empirical Evidence. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11915.

Echenique, F., & Ivanov, L. (2011). Implications of Pareto efficiency for two-agent (household) choice. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 47(2), 129-136.

Fernandez-Val, I. (2003). Household labor supply: evidence for Spain. Investigaciones Económicas, 27(2), 239-275.

Lise, J., & Yamada, K. (2019). Household sharing and commitment: Evidence from panel data on individual expenditures and time use. The Review of Economic Studies, 86(5), 2184-2219.

Mazzocco, M. (2007). Household intertemporal behaviour: A collective characterization and a test of commitment. The Review of Economic Studies, 74(3), 857-895.

Molina, J.A. (2021). The Work-Family Conflict: Evidence from the recent decade and lines of future research. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 42, 4-10.

Molina, J. A., Velilla, J., & Ibarra, H. (2023). Intrahousehold bargaining power in Spain: An empirical test of the collective model. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 44(1), 84-97.

Theloudis, A., Velilla, J., Chiappori, P. A., Giménez-Nadal, J. I., & Molina, J. A. (2025). Commitment and the dynamics of household labour supply. The Economic Journal, 135(665), 354-386.

Velilla, J. (2020). Testing the sharing rule in a collective model of discrete labor supply with Spanish data. Applied Economics Letters, 27(10), 848-853.

Voena, A. (2015). Yours, mine, and ours: Do divorce laws affect the intertemporal behavior of married couples? American Economic Review, 105(8), 2295–2332.