Marriage, Working Spouses, and Male Wage Volatility

Abstract

This paper examines whether the recent increase in male wage volatility varies by marital status and spousal work status. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we estimate separately a standard residual wage process for all men, married men, and married men with a working spouse over the 1967-2010 period. We find that all three groups of men shared similar trends in the variances of both persistent and transitory wage shocks. Married men, including those with a working wife, experienced a smaller increase in their wage volatility compared to all men, yet the differences between the two groups are small.