SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on the well-known phenomenon of dwindling wage elasticities for married women in the US over the recent decades. Results of a novel model experiment approach via sample data ordering unveil considerable heterogeneity across different wage groups. Yet surprisingly constant wage elasticity estimates are revealed within certain wage groups over time as well as across two widely used US data sources, the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). These findings refute the assumed presence of a single-valued aggregate wage elasticity for working wives. Although women’s responsiveness to wages remains largely unchanged over time, we find that the composition of working women into different wage groups has changed considerably, resulting in decreasing wage elasticity estimates at the aggregate level. All these findings were methodologically impossible to acquire had we not dismantled and discarded the stereotyped endogeneity-backed instrumental variable route, which has hitherto blocked the way towards sample data ordering.