Why Are Married Men Working So Much? Home Production, Household Bargaining and Per-Capita Hours

No 2909, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Empirical patterns of labor supply at the micro level tend to reject the unitary model assumption implicit in most macro theories, where households are the deemed to be rational agents. This paper examines the rise in per-capita labor since 1975 and asks how the inclusion of bargaining between spouses in a standard macro model would alter the analysis of recent trends in aggregate labor supply. The main findings are that the stationarity of married men’s work hours reflects weakening of men’s bargaining position as women’s wages rose, and that the unitary model seriously overstates the response of aggregate labor to trends in relative wages.

Keywords: general aggregative models: neoclassical; time allocation and labor supply; economics of gender; marriage; marital dissolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 J12 J16 J20 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published - published in: Review of Economic Studies, 2013, 80 (3), 1055-1085

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