Marriage Matching, Risk Sharing and Spousal Labor Supplies

Joint with: Eugene Choo, University of Toronto and Shannon Seitz, Boston College

The paper integrates marriage matching with the collective model of spousal labor supplies with public goods and full spousal risk sharing. This collective model of marriage matching generalizes Becker's transferable utilities model of the marriage market. The paper derives testable

implications of how changes in marriage market conditions affect spousal labor supplies. In contrast to the sex ratio which is a partial measure, the model motivates a sufficient statistic for marriage market tightness for

each marriage match. The empirical section of the paper tests for marriage market effects on spousal labor supplies using data from the 2000 US census. Changes in marriage market tightness often have large estimated

effects on spousal labor supplies that is consistent with the theory. The magnitudes of the responses differ by race and gender.

For more information, contact Petra Todd.