Child Custody and Family Labour Supply: Evidence from the United States

This paper investigates the impact of the joint child custody reforms on family labour supply in the United States between the 1970s and 1990s. Following the work of Chiappori etal. (Journal of Political Economy, 2002, 110 (1): 37-72), we propose a collective labour supply model in which the custody reforms play roles of a distribution factor that influences household bargaining power. In the empirical section, using data from the March Current Population Survey and PanelStudy of Income Dynamics, we find a significantly positive influence of the legality on married women's labour supply and a negative influence on their husbands'. Checking robustness with different groups: non-migrant couples, couples with children under 18, couples with children before the passage of the laws, couples married before the reforms and couples with non-anti-divorce religious preference, we find the results are consistent with those of the baseline model.