Volume 19, Number 4 (Fall) 1984
Betson, David, and Jacques van der Gaag. 1984. “Working Married Women and the Redistribution of Income.” Journal of Human Resources 19(4):532-543.
In this paper we analyze the impact of the earnings of working married women on the distribution of total household income. Using the Theil measure of inequality, we first show how this impact can be decomposed into three easily interpretable components, one of which is the labor force participation rate of married women. Then, using data from the Current Population Survey, we present the development of these components for each year during the period 1968-1980. Our main conclusion is that the equalizing impact of wives’ earnings on total household income inequality has become increasingly important.
Betson is a member of the Economics Department faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Van der Gaag is an economist with The World Bank. The research herein was partially supported by funds granted to the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (formerly DHEW) pursuant to the provisions of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The authors would like to thank George Jakubson for many helpful conversations, and two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions. We thank Lyle Nelson and John Flesher for assistance in data preparation. Special thanks go to Eugene Smolensky whose detailed comments on an earlier draft significantly improved our exposition.
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