The Role of Source- and Host-Country Characteristics in ... - CReAM

supply and household production has to be assumed. 11
Independent on which kind of
model is assumed to underlie a couple’s decision-making process, women are predicted
to be less likely to participate the higher the partner’s earnings potential. Second, there
is evidence of assortative mating in the marriage market, i.e., more educated (and hence
higher income) men tend to be married to more educated women (see, e.g., Pencavel, 1998).
The husband’s higher income will decrease the incentives for his wife to engage in market
work and, in this way, mask the strength of the effect of source-country culture on women’s
labor supply decisions. We attempt to capture the impact of both assortative mating and
joint decision making within the household by controlling for the partner’s highest level of
education and his working hours. However, as these variables are endogenous to a women’s
labor force participation decision, we will not include them in our basic regression model.
While the aforementioned variables capture the human capital of a woman’s partner,
the partner’s cultural background is also likely to play a role in her labor force participation
decision. Fernández and Fogli (2009) show that a husband’s culture, as measured by the
LFPR in his father’s country of birth, is an important determinant of his wife’s employment
decision. More generally, Fernández et al. (2004) as well as Johnston et al. (2012) find
evidence that an important factor explaining whether a man’s wife works is whether his
own mother worked when he was growing up. The authors argue that a mother’s decision
to work or not is influenced by her beliefs about women’s roles, which then have been
transmitted to her son and influenced any household decision affecting his wife’s work
outcome. Unfortunately, the ESS data do neither contain information on a partner’s
cultural background (i.e., his immigration status and his country of origin), nor do they
include information on his parent’s employment outcomes, making it impossible to control
for any kind of assortative mating with respect to perceptions about gender roles. In
particular, a woman who would like to work is presumably more likely to marry a man
who would be in agreement with these choices. Given that the FLFPR in the source
country serves as proxy for an individual’s beliefs regarding women’s role in society, we
would assume that women from high FLFPR countries will be more likely to marry men
from high FLFPR countries. Hence, we have to keep in mind that part of the effect of our
cultural proxy might not capture a direct impact on an immigrant women’s decision to
participate in the labor market. Rather, it might reflect an indirect effect of a woman’s
mating decision, which is influenced by her beliefs regarding gender roles and ultimately
effects her decision about market work.
As Blau and Kahn (2011) show, a strong predictor of an immigrant women’s labor
supply in the host country is their own labor supply in the source country prior to migrating.
If immigrant women from high FLFP countries have more work experience prior to their
11 The economic theory of joint labor supply decisions within the household was initiated by Becker
(1965) and developed, int. al., by Gronau (1977), Manser and Brown (1980) and McElroy and Horney
(1981).
10