Unemployment Duration of Spouses: Evidence From France

This paper analyzes the conditional probability of leaving unemployment of French married individuals from 1991 to 2002. We nd that the eect of spousal labor income on unemployment duration is asymmetric for men and women. In particular, the probability of men to nd a job is increasing in wife labor income, while it is decreasing in husband's earnings for women. To adjust for endogenous selection into marriage, we use the occupation of the fathers in-law as an instrumental variable for the spousal wage. Finally, we show that introducing a breadwinner stigma in a joint job search model generates the positive correlation observed for men in the data.