Job and Stable Marriage: Does Context Matter?

Anna Matysiak, Warsaw School of Economics
Marta Styrc, Warsaw School of Economics

This study contributes to the recent discussion on the role of the context for the relationship between women’s employment and marital stability. This literature presupposed that women’s employment is more likely to stabilise marriages if women’s employment is state supported and socially accepted. To this end we compare Italy and Poland – two countries which share a number of similarities, like strong attachment to family and Catholic values and delayed diffusion of new family behaviours, and at the same time display key differences with regard to women’s labour force participation, household living standards and gender roles. Using recent representative surveys, the Italian Multipurpose Household Survey and the Polish Generations and Gender Survey, we estimate a joint multiprocess model of marital disruption and paid work participation which allows us to account for the common unobserved factors affecting the two processes and to estimate an unbiased effect of employment on marital disruption.