Marriage and Labor Market Outcomes

Marriage and labor market outcomes are deeply related, particularly for women. A large literature finds that the labor supply decisions of married women respond to their husbands’ employment status, wages, and job characteristics. There is also evidence that the effects of spouse characteristics on labor market outcomes operate not just through standard neoclassical cross-wage and income effects but also through household bargaining and gender norm effects, in which the relative incomes of husband and wife affect the distribution of marital surplus, marital satisfaction, and marital stability. Marriage market characteristics affect marital status and spouse characteristics, as well as the outside option, and therefore bargaining power, within marriage. Marriage market characteristics can therefore affect premarital investments, which ultimately affect labor market outcomes within marriage and also affect labor supply decisions within marriage conditional on these premarital investments.