New evidence of the interdependence in the labor-supply behavior of white couples

A logit technique is used to estimate couples' joint probabilities of various labor-force statuses, given their personal characteristics. Conditional probabilities of the labor-force status of spouses are inferred. An analysis of these probabilities suggests that, while spouses appear to be complementary in participation decisions, there is also evidence of substitutability in spouses' work hours, ceteris paribus.