The inversion of married women's labour supply and wage: Evidence from Thailand

Abstract

This study investigates the labour supply behaviour of married Thai women with reference to their own and their spouse's wages. Controlling for spousal education and number of children, the main findings indicate an inverse relationship between married women's labour supply and wages, contrary to the evidence from developed countries. The estimated own wage elasticity ranges from −1.70 to −2.40 and the cross elasticity ranges from −0.16 to −0.17, indicating that the impact of own wage on labour supplied is much larger than spouse's wage. The results from disaggregation classified according to different socioeconomic backgrounds also show negative elasticities between own and spouses' wage across all subgroups, except for those with university degrees and higher income.

Educational assortative mating and income inequality in Thailand

“…The paper also suggested that countries with higher female employment and more modern societies tended to have lower educational homogamy. Liao and Paweenawat (2021) examined the educational expansion and high labor force participation rate of married Thai women over time, and found an inverse relationship between married women's labor supply and wages.…”

Impact of women's education on marriage outcomes

“…From the reason above women trend to delay marry or stay single because to marry once most of them want to make sure that they are ready for forming a family especially of financial. At the present social are widely open for homosexual and transgender so, this will effect to the declining of fertility rate and the effect of education have influence to women to decide marry and forming a family by the higher education will decrease the fertility rate (Liao & Paweenawat, 2019).…”