Cross effects of commuting time cost on partner's labour supply: a gender analysis

Abstract

This paper explores the effect of longer husband's commuting time/distance on: 1) family's time allocation; 2) the spouse's participation and willingness to commute. In a model of family labour supply, we analyze how individual participation costs (namely commuting time) may a ffect the partner's labour supply decisions. We show that, in presence of household production and labour market rigidities, the longer husband's commuting time reduces his wife's participation, pushing her to specialize in home production. We test our predictions using the German SOEP Panel between 1997 and 2010. Endogeneity of commuting time is accounted by using employer-driven changes in travel to work distance. In line with our model predictions, we find that a 1% increase in husband's commuting time reduces his wife's probability of participating into the labour force by 0.013 percentage points: 2.1% over the average.