Volume 22, Number 1 (Winter) 1987
Maloney, Tim. 1987. "Employment Constraints and the Labor Supply of Married Women: A Reexamination of the Added Worker Effect." Journal of Human Resources 22(1):51-61.
Little evidence is found to support the "conventional" notion of the added worker effect. The husband's unemployment has no measurable impact on the wife's actual hours of work. However, the constraint on his ability to supply hours of work to the labor market, and not simply his unemployment, influences his wife's labor supply. Furthermore, the observed hours of work of the wife may not accurately reflect her "desired" hours of work. With these considerations the wife's labor supply is found to be positively J associated with the unemployment and underemployment of her husband, and this added worker effect is estimated to be quite substantial.
The author is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The material in this project was prepared under Grant no. SS-55-82-15 from the Social Science Research Council. Researchers undertaking such projects under Council sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. Therefore, points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of the Social Science Research Council. Glen Cain, Chris Flinn, Lee Hansen, and Paula Voos provided many helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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