Sexual orientation and household decision making. Same-sex couples' balance of power and labor supply choices

I estimate how intra-household bargaining affects gay and lesbian couples¿ labor supplies, investigating their similarity to heterosexual decision-making, in a collective household framework. Data from the 2000 US Census shows that couples of all types exhibit a significant response to bargaining power shifts, as measured by differences between partners in age or non-labor income. In gay, lesbian, and heterosexual cohabiting couples, a relatively young or rich partner has more bargaining power and hence supplies less labor, the opposite holding for his/her mate. Married couples value the older spouse instead, or the richer. No effects are found for same-sex roommates.Same-sex couples; Household bargaining power; Labor Supply

Sexual Orientation and Household Decision Making. Same-Sex Couples’ Balance of Power and Labor Supply Choices

I estimate how intra-household bargaining affects gay and lesbian couples’ labor supplies, investigating their similarity to heterosexual decision-making, in a collective household framework. Data from the 2000 US Census show that couples of all types exhibit a significant response to bargaining power shifts, as measured by differences between partners in age or non-labor income. In gay, lesbian, and heterosexual cohabiting couples, a relatively young or rich partner has more bargaining power and hence supplies less labor, the opposite holding for his/her mate. Married couples value the older spouse instead, or the richer. No effects are found for same-sex roommates.Household Decision Making, Same-Sex Couples, Labor Supply

Sexual Orientation and Household Savings: Do Homosexual Couples Save More?

We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household savings using 2000 US Census data, and find that gay and lesbian couples own significantly more retirement income than heterosexuals, while cohabiting heterosexuals save more than their married counterparts. In a household savings model, we interpret this homosexual-specific differential as due to the extremely low fertility of same-sex couples, in addition to the precautionary motives driving cohabiting households to save more than married ones. Evidence from homeowners' ratio of mortgage payments to house value exhibits the same pattern of savings differentials by sexual orientation and cohabiting status.sexual orientation, household savings, retirement, housing

Quality of Available Mates, Education and Intra-Household Bargaining Power

This paper further explores the role of sex ratios on spouses’ bargaining power, by focusing on educational attainment in order to capture the qualitative aspect of mate availability. Using Census and Current Population Survey data for U.S. metropolitan areas in year 2000, a quality sex ratio is constructed by education brackets to test the effect on the intra-household bargaining power of couples in the corresponding education bracket. We argue that a relative shortage of suitably educated women in the spouse’s potential marriage market increases wives’ bargaining power in the household while it lowers their husbands’. Additionally, we test the prediction that this bargaining power effect is greater as the assortative mating order by education increases. We consider a collective labor supply household model, in which each spouse’s labor supply is negatively related to their level of bargaining power. We find that higher relative shortage of comparably educated women in the couple’s metropolitan area reduces wives’ labor supply and increases their husbands’. Also, the labor supply impact is stronger for couples in higher education groups. No such effects are found for unmarried individuals, which is consistent with bargaining theory.Education, Intra-Household Bargaining Power, Labor Supply

Fatter Attraction: Marital Status and the Relationship between BMI and Labor Supply

We empirically analyze the labor supply choices of married men and women according to their body size (BMI), using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, and unmarried men and women as comparison group. Heavier husbands are found to work significantly more hours and earn more labor income, controlling for both spouses’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Conversely, no such effect is found for either unmarried individuals or for married women. We suggest a marriage market mechanism through which male BMI and earnings are positively related. Heavier married men compensate for their negative physical trait by providing their wives with more disposable income, working more hours and earning more. Heavier women may not able to compensate their spouse through labor supply, as female physical traits are more relevant in the marriage market than the corresponding male traits.Body Size, Labor Supply, Earnings, Marriage

Culture and household decision making: Native and foreign-born couples' balance of power and labor supply choices in the US

This study investigates how spouses’ cultural backgrounds mediate the role of intra-household bargaining in the labor supply decisions of foreign-born and US-native couples, in a collective-household framework. Using data from the 2000 US Census I show that the labor supplies of US-born couples, and of those foreign-born coming from countries with family institutions similar to the US, are significantly related to bargaining power forces such as differences between spouses in age, and non-labor income, controlling for both spouses’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Households whose culture of origin supports strict and unequal gender roles do not exhibit any association of balance of power and their labor supply decisions. This cultural asymmetry suggests that spousal traits are assessed differently across couples within the US, and that how households make use of their outside opportunities and economic and institutional environment may depend on their ethnicities.Culture, Household bargaining power, Labor supply.

Abortion and Female Power in the Household Evidence from Labor Supply

Legalization of abortion in the 1970s represents a major cultural change: it gives women a higher degree of freedom to directly control their fertility, allowing them to ultimately decide upon children without man’s consent and to decrease uncertainty in their expected labor market returns. This public policy and its implications on female behavior have been so far analyzed through its direct consequences on fertility and fertility technology, primarily on women actually experiencing an abortion. However, it seems relevant to evaluate its indirect effects on female bargaining power within the household, for all women that face abortion as an actual opportunity, without necessarily experiencing one. I focus on the indirect effect of abortion legalization in the United States on women’s position in the household. My findings suggest that the legalization positively affected female bargaining power.Abortion, collective household behavior, labor supply

Endogenous Minimum Participation in International Environmental Treaties

Many international treaties come into force only after a minimum number of countries have signed and ratified the treaty. Why do countries agree to introduce a minimum participation constraint among the rules characterising an international treaty? This question is particularly relevant in the case of environmental treaties dealing with global commons, where free-riding incentives are strong. Is a minimum participation rule a way to offset these free-riding incentives? Why do countries that know they have an incentive to free-ride accept to “tie their hands” through the introduction of a minimum participation constraint? This paper addresses the above questions by analysing a three-stage non-cooperative coalition formation game. In the first stage, countries set the minimum coalition size that is necessary for the treaty to come into force. In the second stage, countries decide whether to sign the treaty. In the third stage, the equilibrium values of the decision variables are set. At the equilibrium, both the minimum participation constraint and the number of signatories – the coalition size – are determined. This paper shows that a non-trivial partial coalition, sustained by a binding minimum participation constraint, forms at the equilibrium. This paper thus explains why in international negotiations all countries often agree on a minimum participation rule even when some of them do not intend to sign the treaty. The paper also analyses the optimal size of the minimum participation constraint.Agreements, Climate, Negotiations, Policy, Incentives

Fatter attraction: anthropometric and socieconomic matching on the marriage market

We construct a matching model on the marriage market along more than one characteristic, where individuals have preferences over physical attractiveness (proxied by anthropometric characteristics) and market and household productivity of potential mates (proxied by socioeconomic characteristics), with a certain degree of substitutability between them. Men and women assess each other through an index combining these various attributes, so the matching is one-dimensional. We estimate the sorting and trade-offs among these characteristics using data from the PSID, finding evidence of compensation between anthropometric and socioeconomic characteristics for both genders, and of equality of these marginal rates of substitution across traits. Among men, a 10% increase in BMI can be compensated by a higher wage, the supplement being estimated to be around 3%. Similarly, for women, an additional year of education may compensate up to three BMI units.BMI, marriage market, wages, education

Matching with a Handicap: The Case of Smoking in the Marriage Market

We develop a matching model on the marriage market, where individuals have preferences over the smoking status of potential mates, and over their socioeconomic quality. Spousal smoking is bad for non-smokers, but it is neutral for smokers, while individuals always prefer high socioeconomic quality. Furthermore, there is a gender difference in smoking prevalence, there being more smoking men than smoking women for all education levels, so that smoking women and non-smoking men are in short supply. The model generates clear cut conditions regarding matching patterns. Using CPS data and its Tobacco Use Supplements for the years 1996 to 2007, and proxying socioeconomic status by educational attainment, we find that these conditions are satisfied. There are fewer "mixed" couples where the wife smokes than vice-versa, and matching is assortative on education within smoking types of couples. Among non-smoking wives those with smoking husbands have on average 0.14 fewer years of completed education than those with non-smoking husbands. Finally, and somewhat counterintuitively, we find that, as theory predicts, among smoking husbands, those who marry smoking wives have on average 0.16 more years of completed education than those with non-smoking wives.Smoking, education, matching, marriage market