Full Citation

Title: An Integrated Model of Occupation Choice, Spouse Choice, and Family Labor Supply

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: I present an integrated model of occupation choice, spouse choice, family labor supply, and fertility that unifies an extensive empirical literature on career and family and provides predictions on the relationship among career, family, and marriage market outcomes. Two key assumptions of the model are that occupations differ both in wages and in an amenity termed flexibility, and that children require a nontrivial amount of parental time that has no market substitute. When men and women face identical labor market conditions but women have an advantage in child care, men always have a higher return to entering the higher- earning occupation than women. Occupations with more costly flexibility, modeled as a nonlinearity in wages, have a lower fraction of women, less positive assortative mating on earnings, and lower fertility among dual-career couples. Costly flexibility may induce high- earning couples to share home production, which rewards husbands who are simultaneously high-earning and productive in child care. Empirical evidence broadly supports two main theoretical predictions: dual-career couples in occupations with less costly flexibility are more likely to have children, and professional women who achieve “career and family” in occupations with costlier flexibility are more likely to have husbands less educated than themselves.

Url: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a551/91a437e8ba62e6e7fe59b49634aa992802b0.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Hurder, Stephanie

Publisher: Harvard Business School and Harvard University Department of Economics

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: United States