A Life-Cycle Consistent Empirical Model of Family Labour Supply Using Cross-Section Data

Abstract

This paper estimates a utility maximising model of the joint determination of male and female labour supplies using a sample of married couples from the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey. The emphasis is on the estimation of within period preferences that are consistent with intertemporal two-stage budgeting under uncertainty. However, the approach we adopt provides an alternative method of estimating certain aspects of life-cycle behaviour to the fixed effects λ-constant approach of Heckman and MaCurdy (1980), MaCurdy (1981) and Browning, Deaton and Irish (1985). Moreover, it relaxes some of the underlying restrictions that are implicit in these λ-constant models under uncertainty.