Relative income concerns and the rise in married women's employment
研究女性就业决策是否受其他女性就业行为的影响，构建包含相对收入关切的模型，并用姐妹和妯娌数据检验，发现相对收入假说能解释部分女性就业增长。
We ask whether women's decisions to be in the workforce may be affected by the decisions of other women in ways not captured by standard models. We develop a model that augments the simple neoclassical framework by introducing relative income concerns into women's (or families') utility functions. In this model, the entry of some women into paid employment can spur the entry of other women, independently of wage and income effects. We show that relative income concerns can help to explain why, over some periods, women's employment rose faster than can be accounted for by the simple neoclassical model. We test the model by asking whether women's decisions to seek paid employment depend on the employment or incomes of other women with whom relative income comparisons might be important, including sisters and sisters-in-law. The evidence is largely supportive of the relative income hypothesis.