We study interdependencies in spousal labor supply and the effectiveness of intrahousehold insurance in a sample of married couples, where the husband loses his job due to a mass layoff or plant closure using data from the Austrian Social Security Database. We show that in our sample of relatively young couples the shock hits households at crucial stages of family formation, which requires careful modeling of the wives' counterfactual lifecycle labor market patterns. In our empirical analysis, we propose three independent control groups of unaffected households to identify the causal effects of husbands' displacement on wives' labor supply. Our empirical results show that husbands suffer large and persistent employment and earnings losses over the first 5 years after displacement. But wives' labor supply increases only moderately and they respond predominantly at the extensive margin. The implied participation elasticity with respect to the husband's earnings shock is very small, about -0:04. While the wives' earnings gains recover only a tiny fraction of the household income loss, public transfers and taxes are a more important insurance at least in the short run. In terms of non-labor market related outcomes, we find a small positive effect on the probability of divorce, but no effect of the husband's job displacement on fertility. The presence and ages of children in the household are crucial determinants of the wife's labor supply response. The most responsive group are mothers, who are planning to return to the labor market after a maternity break, while mothers of very young children or wives without children remain unresponsive. We thus conclude that Austria's strong gender identity norms are an explanation for the limited scope of intra-household insurance.

中文翻译：

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工作转移、家庭动态和配偶劳动力供应

我们使用奥地利社会保障数据库中的数据，在已婚夫妇样本中研究配偶劳动力供应的相互依赖性和家庭内部保险的有效性，其中丈夫因大规模裁员或工厂关闭而失业。我们表明，在我们相对年轻的夫妇样本中，冲击波及处于家庭形成关键阶段的家庭，这需要对妻子的反事实生命周期劳动力市场模式进行仔细建模。在我们的实证分析中，我们提出了三个独立的未受影响家庭控制组来确定丈夫流离失所对妻子劳动力供应的因果影响。我们的实证结果表明，丈夫在流离失所后的前 5 年遭受巨大而持续的就业和收入损失。但妻子们 劳动力供应仅适度增加，他们主要在广泛的边际做出反应。丈夫收入冲击的隐含参与弹性非常小，约为-0:04。虽然妻子的收入增加只能弥补家庭收入损失的一小部分，但至少在短期内，公共转移支付和税收是更重要的保险。在非劳动力市场相关的结果方面，我们发现对离婚概率有很小的积极影响，但丈夫的工作转移对生育率没有影响。家庭中孩子的存在和年龄是妻子劳动力供应反应的关键决定因素。最敏感的群体是计划在产假后重返劳动力市场的母亲，而非常年幼孩子的母亲或没有孩子的妻子仍然没有反应。因此，我们得出结论，奥地利强大的性别认同规范是对家庭内部保险范围有限的解释。