Influence of a Wife's Working Status on Her Husband's Accumulation of Human Capital

Japanese household‐level data consisting of husband's earnings, wife's working status and their schooling levels are used to test three hypotheses, with particular consideration given to the time‐consuming process of human capital accumulation within marriages. The empirical results supports the following hypotheses: (i) a non‐working wife's schooling has a greater positive effect on her husband's earnings than a working wife's schooling; and (ii) the effect of a non‐working wife's schooling increases with the length of marriage, whereas the effect of a working wife's schooling does not change over the course of marriage.