Labour Force Participation of Mature Age Men in Australia: The Role of Spousal Participation

Kostas Mavromaras and Rong Zhu ()
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Rong Zhu: Flinders University

No 7581, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we estimate the interdependence of labour force participation decisions made by Australian couples from 2001 to 2011. We focus on couples with a mature age husband, and estimate the interdependence of the participation decision of the couple. We find that the decision of a wife to work or not influences positively, and in a causal fashion, the decision of her husband to work or not. In our paper we use counterfactual analysis to estimate the impact of the increasing labour force participation of a wife on her husband's participation. We find that the increased labour force participation of married women observed between 2002 and 2011 has been responsible for about a 4 percentage points increase in the participation of their mature age husbands.

Keywords: male employment trends; labour force participation; spousal status; joint decision making; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cdm, nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-lma
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Published - published in: Oxford Economic Papers, 2015, 67, 310–333

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