TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stevenson,Betsey
TI  - Divorce Law and Women's Labor Supply
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14346
PY  - 2008
Y2  - September 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14346
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14346.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Betsey Stevenson
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
1454 Steinberg - Dietrich Hall
3620 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 215/898-3019
Fax: 215/898-7635
E-Mail: betseys@wharton.upenn.edu
AB  - Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage.  By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force.  Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls.  I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the pre-existing laws regarding property division.
ER  -