The effects of marital transitions and spousal characteristic on economic outcomes

Ozcan, Berkay

The effects of marital transitions and spousal characteristic on economic outcomes

Document Type

Doctoral thesis
Published Version

Author

Ozcan, Berkay

Director

Bernardi, Fabrizio
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta

Publication Date

2008-10-31

Citation

Ozcan, B. The effects of marital transitions and spousal characteristic on economic outcomes. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; 2008. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/7251

This citation was generated automatically.

Doctoral program

Programa de doctorat en Ciències Polítiques i Socials

Abstract

My dissertation aims to improve our understanding of why and how couple dynamics and marital transitions affect four critical economic outcomes: household savings, labour supply, transition to self-employment and income distribution. In all of my papers, behavior of the couple is at the center. First chapter analayzes the likelihood of starting a business and examines at the influence of marriage, its duration and the characteristics of the spouse on the probability to make a transition to entrepreneurship. In the second chapter, I take advantage of Irish Divorce Law introduced in 1996 as quasi-natural experiment for the rise in the risk of divorce and explain its effects on household savings behavior. The third chapterturns its attention to labour supply behaviour of the men on women experiencing a risk in the marital stability. Similarly, the last paper is also concerned about entry and exits from marriage, but it considers these phenomena together with the rise in female employment. Consequently, this chapter sheds light to the mechanisms through which changes in family types and labor supply decisions of women are actually leading to higher or lower inequality. Generally, my dissertation covers both substantive and methodological issues on several fields from inequality research to family demographics and entrepreneurship.
Esta tesis tiene el objetivo de ampliar y perfeccionar nuestra comprensión de por qué y cómo la dinámica de pareja afecta cuatro críticos resultados económicos que están directamente realacionados con la desigualdad y la estratificación. Estos resultados son, respectivamente; ser autónomo, la oferta de trabajo, el ahorro de los hogares y la distribución del ingreso. A lo largo de la tesis, con la dinámica de pareja, concibo dos conceptos: en primer lugar implica formar parte de una pareja (es decir, tener una esposa/o con ciertas características) versus ser soltero/a y transiciones entre estos dos estados. Y la segunda se refiere a los cambios en el comportamiento de los esposos debido a un cambio de contexto, como un aumento en el riesgo de disolución de la pareja. Por consiguiente, analiza las implicaciones de estos dos conceptos en cada una de estas variables económicas. La tesis se utiliza una serie de grandes conjuntos de datos longitudinales de diferentes países (p.e. PSID, GSOEP, PHCE, Living in Ireland Survey) y estratégias econométricas. Estas características incluyen el análisis de supervivencia, las estimaciones de diff-en-diff, simulaciones y descomposiciones.

Keywords

survival analysis, spousal characteristics, self-employment, labor supply, marriage, divorce risk, income distribution, household savings, aspectes economics, aspectes socials, divorci, aspectes religiosos, familia, aspectes socials, treball, dones, aspectes socials, diferencies entre sexes, aspectes socials, aspectes economics, matrimoni, differences-in-differences estimation, simulations, decompositions