Wives' Relative Wages, Husbands' Paid Work Hours, and Wives' Labor-Force Exit

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete-time event-history analysis to show that wives'...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marriage and family 2011-02, Vol.73 (1), p.250-263
Main Author: Shafer, Emily Fitzgibbons
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dual career couples
Economic sociology
Economics
Educational Attainment
Employed Women
Employment
Employment Patterns
Evidence
Family Income
Females
Gender equality
Hours of work
Husbands
Labor
Labor Force
Labor Force Participation
Labour force
Labour market participation
Literature Reviews
Longitudinal Studies
Males
Marital Status
Men
Mothers
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
Of General Interest
Opportunities
Pay
Prediction
Salary Wage Differentials
Sexuality. Marriage. Family relations
Sociology
Sociology of economy and development
Sociology of the family. Age groups
Spouses
Standard of living. Income
Statistical Analysis
Wage rate
Wages
Wages & salaries
Wives
Women workers
women's earnings
women's employment
Work hours
Workforce
Working Hours
Working Women
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Summary:Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete-time event-history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are their own or their husbands' absolute wages. In addition, I show that women married to men who work more than 45 hours per week are more likely to exit the labor force than are wives whose husbands' work approximately 40 hours per week. My findings highlight the need to examine how women's partners affect women's labor-force participation.
ISSN:0022-2445
1741-3737
DOI:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00802.x