Does wife's labour supply influence labour force participation of her elderly husband? Lessons from France

Since the mid-1990s, the labour force participation of older men and women increased substantially in France. In this paper, we investigate the effect of having a participating wife on the labour market behaviour of her elderly husband. Working with data from the French Labour Force Survey and using the cohort-specific participation rate of women at age 40 as an instrument for their current participation, we find that the magnitude of the causal relationship is strong. The likelihood of husbands' participation increases of about 19 points when their wives are currently active in the labour market. Such findings support the view that some complementarities in leisure exist so that French married men attribute a higher value to leisure when it is shared with their wife. It also suggests that policy makers should take into account both direct and indirect effects when they implement a change in the economic environment of elderly.