Does availability of common law marriage (CLM henceforth) in the U.S help explain variation in the labor force participation, hours of work and hours of household production of men and women over time and across states? As CLM offers more legal protection to household producers at the margin...

The Current Population Survey is used to investigate effects of Common Law Marriage (CLM) on whether young US-born adults live in couples in the U.S. CLM effects are identified through cross-state and time variation, as some states abolished CLM over the period examined. Analysis based on Gary...

We present a theory on migration of dual-earner couples and test it in the context of international migration. Our model predicts that the probability that a couple emigrates increases in the home-country earnings of the primary earner. The effect of the home-country earnings of the secondary...

Women born in 1935 went to college significantly less than their male counterparts and married women's labor force participation (LFP) averaged 40% between the ages of thirty and forty. The cohort born twenty years later behaved very differently. The education gender gap was eliminated and...

We examine the impact of culture on the work behavior of second-generation immigrant women in Canada. We contribute to the current literature by analyzing the role of intermarriage in intergenerational transmission of culture and its subsequent effect on labor market outcomes. Using relative...

We develop a collective household model with spousal matching in which there exists marital gains to assortative matching and marriage quality for each couple is revealed ex post. Changes in alimony laws are shown to affect existing couples and couples-to-be differently. For existing couples,...

This study examines the relationship between bargaining power and the use of contraceptives in the household. Using data from rural Bangladesh in 1998-1999 it investigates whether women in a relatively strong bargaining position at the time of marriage continue to remain in a strong position...

This paper examines the relationship between specialization and happiness in marriage in the U.S. and Japan. Our findings, based on the General Social Surveys in the U.S. and Japan, indicate both similarities and differences in the determinants of marital happiness in the two countries. In the...

We find a strong association between family status and labor market outcomes for recent cohorts of West German men in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Living with a partner and living with a child both have substantial positive effects on earnings and work hours. These effects persist in fixed...

Dominant development policy approaches recommend women’s employment on the grounds that it facilitates their empowerment, which in turn is believed to be instrumental in enhancing women’s well-being. However, empirical work on the relationship between women’s employment status and their...