Long-term changes in married couples' labor supply and taxes: Evidence from the US and Europe since the 1980s
研究了1980年代初至2016年美国及七个欧洲国家已婚夫妇的就业率和工时变化，通过家庭劳动供给模型分析非线性劳动所得税的影响，发现劳动所得税是解释已婚女性工时变化的关键因素，但仅部分解释了就业率的长期增长。
We document the time-series of employment rates and hours worked per employed by married couples in the US and seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) from the early 1980s through 2016. Relying on a model of joint household labor supply decisions, we quantitatively analyze the role of non-linear labor income taxes for explaining the evolution of hours worked of married couples over time, using as inputs the full country- and year-specific statutory labor income tax codes. We further evaluate the role of consumption taxes, gender and educational wage premia, and the educational composition. The model is quite successful in replicating the time series behavior of hours worked per employed married woman, with labor income taxes being the key driving force. It does however capture only part of the secular increase in married women's employment rates in the 1980s and early 1990s, suggesting an important role for factors not considered in this paper. An independent and important contribution of the paper is that we make the non-linear tax codes used as an input into the analysis available as a user-friendly and easily integrable set of Matlab codes.