Men and islands: Dealing with the family in empirical labor economics

Recent research in family economics emphasizes the interdependence of men's decisions about work and family, and should prompt a reconsideration of the standard practice in labor economics of ‘controlling’ for marital status and children in the analysis of labor market outcomes. Several factors contribute to a concern about work-family simultaneity. First, married men behave very differently from single men, and fathers from non-fathers. Second, transitions into and out of marriage, cohabitation, and custodial parenthood respond to current economic conditions, and not just to fixed individual characteristics. Finally, demographic changes in developed countries have left marriage and parenthood optional, economically ambiguous, and relatively unstable. Labor economists need to recognize that a man's current partnership and parenting status are current choices that can change, that are expected to change, and that respond to the social, economic, and institutional forces that also condition labor market behavior.