Divorce-Law Changes, Household Bargaining, and Married Women's Labor Supply Revisited

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PSC Working Paper Series
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AFDC
Aid to Families with Dependent Children
Assets
Bargaining power
Bargaining within marriage
Compensation
Cooperative bargaining models
Current Population Survey
Division of property
Divorce
Divorce law
Divorce reform
Employment
Female employment
Female labor force participation
Household allocation
Household decision making
Labor force
Labor supply
Laws
Marital aspirations
Marital behavior
Marital contract
Marital dissolution
Marital expectations
Marital formation
Marital partners
Marital property
Marriage
Property division
Property division laws
Property laws
Settlements
Statistics
Survey Data
Unilateral divorce
Demography, Population, and Ecology
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Sociology
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Abstract

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the underlying property laws.

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2007-05-10
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Stevenson, Betsey. 2007. "Divorce-Law Changes, Household Bargaining, and Married Women's Labor Supply Revisited." PSC Working Paper Series PSC 07-03.
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