‘Household Income and Employment Strategies’

Ernesto Villanueva, Libertad González Luna, María José González López, Pau Baizán Muñoz, Sebastian Sarasa Urdiola, Stefanie Brodmann, Tiziana Nazio.

We intend to explain emerging new patterns of household employment in terms of changes in both males’ and females’ labour market status.

Firstly, we examine how the employment status of males affects spouses’ labour supply, particularly in couples where males’ earnings capacity and job security are weak. The key question is under which conditions the female partner compensates for inadequate male earnings. Since wives’ labour supply is easily incompatible with motherhood and home production, we pay special attention to male partners’ degree of sharing in care and household work.

Secondly, we examine how the changing opportunity cost structure of employment interruptions affects women’s and mothers’ labour supply. In part, women’s educational level is rising sharply and, in part, female earnings are rising relative to men’s. From a household perspective, then, we predict that women will have fewer and shorter interruptions.

Thirdly, we examine couples’ employment behaviour in terms of the widening inter-household income disparities and the pronounced relative erosion of incomes in young and also low skilled households. We are especially concerned with the conditions under which augmented work incomes of wives helps narrow income inequalities. A key issue here is, however, the relationship between human capital and fertility. If, as in Southern Europe, fertility is inversely related to mothers? human capital, the cost of children will help augment inter-household welfare disparities. If, as in Northern Europe, the relationship is inversed, the cost of children will narrow disparities.