How Divorce Reforms Induced Married Couples to Supply More Labor∗
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摘要
This paper investigates how shifting from Title-Based Regime (TBR) to Equitable Distribution Regime (EDR) alters labor supply and welfare for married couples. Using staggered DiD with PSID/NLSW data, the author finds that EDR raises labor supply for both spouses, with wives contributing about 30% of the total rise in female labor force participation over the past seven decades. The mechanism is framed through precautionary savings: increased post-divorce asset-sharing uncertainty makes households save more and work more during marriage. A dynamic two-period model shows that precautionary savings, governed by relative prudence (RP = 1+γ), determines the sign of the response; in CRRA settings the switch occurs at γ=1. Welfare analysis indicates that while wives may gain post-divorce shares under EDR, overall household welfare can decline during marriage due to higher uncertainty, suggesting community-property-like sharing could yield similar wife shares with less welfare loss [page::1][page::14][page::21][page::25].
