Household Production, and Marriage ” in Advances in Household Economics,

This chapter presents a graphical model that shows how marriage market conditions can possibly affect reservation wages and therefore labor supply. This model assumes that marriage market conditions influence equilibrium compensations for household production work in marriage, the work that individuals are willing to supply to a marriage. This chapter also presents a retrospective on market analyses of household production in marriage. In particular, previous studies are reported that have found evidence for two kinds of effects of marriage market conditions on labor supply: effects taking the form of compensating differentials in marriage and sex ratio effects. This evidence possibly indicates that marriage markets affect women’s labor supply via effects on market conditions in markets for women’s work in marital household production. 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Economi