The effect of marriage on women’s work at home

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, University of Tehran

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 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.

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References

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Woman in Development & Politics
Volume 15, Issue 2
July 2017
Pages 187-204

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