economics
Vahid Mehrbani
Abstract
Since family economics is the application of economic theory in explaining behavior with respect to family, marriage is undoubtedly one of the items in this realm. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of marriage on women's home labor supply theoretically and empirically. Accordingly, the ...
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Since family economics is the application of economic theory in explaining behavior with respect to family, marriage is undoubtedly one of the items in this realm. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of marriage on women's home labor supply theoretically and empirically. Accordingly, the utility maximization approach is applied to demonstrate how the behavior of a typical single woman changes after marriage. The theoretical model predicts that women turn to specialization at home production following marriage and thereby their welfare will increase. Two samples including single and married women who reside in Tehran have been used to present empirical evidence. These samples are restricted to all regions of Tehran on the basis of segmentation carried out by municipality. Data have been gathered by questionnaire which was constructed by author. Results approve the prediction of theoretical analysis. Estimations show that the event of marriage will significantly lead to an increase in home labor supply. These findings suggest that women specialize at home production due to marriage. In addition, results also indicate that income, education and employment have negative and statistically significant effect on work within home while, by contrast, the number of children has positive and statistically significant impact.
economics
Vahid Mehrbani
Abstract
Conventional economic theory neglects home production and provides services within household because what is produced and consumed within households has not economic value and hence does not enter the national accounts. The main reason of such ignorance is that the home products are not transmitted from ...
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Conventional economic theory neglects home production and provides services within household because what is produced and consumed within households has not economic value and hence does not enter the national accounts. The main reason of such ignorance is that the home products are not transmitted from market. The history of this viewpoint dates back to the advent of industrialization into the capitalism. Family is a framework for preparation of many worthy commodities in which welfare of individuals is determined while women attend the core of this process. Some economists in the second half of the twentieth century attempted to incorporate housework into the neoclassical theory of labor-leisure choice. Accordingly, this paper also presents an alternative model to analyze such valuable activity called "housework" in which characteristics of Iranian family is more compatible including evident implications. The model leads to a supply function of housework that represents the housework as a negative function of female's wage rate and a positive function of husband's wage and the wife's share from husband's earnings. The method of research is gathering data of married women and analyzing evidence according to econometric equations. These data have been gathered by questionnaire. The housework supply function has been estimated by using a sample that includes 409 married women who reside in Tehran and are at least 35 years old. The estimation is based on logistic distribution function and Maximum Likelihood method. Results suggest that earnings, education, employment and age of women besides family income and marriage duration have negative effect on housework but number of children shows positive impact. As a whole, factors that make market opportunities more attractive tend to lessen the time devoted to housework and vice versa.