SOLAZ Anne

Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐1980s and onward. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework primarily resulted from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both sexes, resulting in convergence only where men increased more than did women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are explained by changes in behavior rather than compositional changes in population characteristics. Though level differences in unpaid work persist, our findings regarding trends support gender convergence in that they are general across country contexts that vary regarding policy and social norms about gender, family, and work.

Among individuals born in the 1930s, only 4% of men and 5% of women had lived in a couple more than once by age 50. The vast majority had only one co-resident union in their lifetime, most often married. Among the generations born thirty years later, in the 1960s, a quarter of men and women aged 50 have already experienced at least two unions. Men are more likely than women to re-form a couple at all ages. These gender differences increase with age: men are a quarter more likely than women to remarry at age 50 and three times more likely at age 73. Divorces of seniors are on the rise.

The spread of COVID-19 and resulting local and national lockdowns have a host of potential consequences for demographic trends. While impacts on mortality and, to some extent, short-term migration flows are beginning to be documented, it is too early to measure actual consequences for family demography. To gain insight into potential future consequences of the lockdown for family demography, we use cross-national Google Trends search data to explore whether trends in searches for words related to fertility, relationship formation, and relationship dissolution changed following lockdowns compared to average, pre-lockdown levels in Europe and the United States. Because lockdowns were not widely anticipated or simultaneous in timing or intensity, we exploit variability over time and between countries (and U.S. states). We use a panel event-study design and difference-in-differences methods, and account for seasonal trends and average country-level (or state-level) differences in searches. We find statistically significant impacts of lockdown timing on changes in searches for terms such as wedding and those related to condom use, emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and abortion, but little evidence of changes in searches related to fertility. Impacts for union formation and dissolution tended to only be statistically significant at the start of a lockdown with a return to average-levels about 2 to 3 months after lockdown initiation, particularly in Europe. Compared to Europe, returns to average search levels were less evident for the U.S., even 2 to 3 months after lockdowns were introduced. This may be due to the fact, in the U.S., health and social policy responses were less demarcated than in Europe, such that economic uncertainty was likely of larger magnitude. Such pandemic-related economic uncertainty may therefore have the potential to slightly increase already existing polarization in family formation behaviours in the U.S. Alongside contributing to the wider literature on economic uncertainty and family behaviors, this paper also proposes strategies for efficient use of Google Trends data, such as making relative comparisons and testing sensitivity to outliers, and provides a template and cautions for their use in demographic research when actual demographic trends data are not yet available.

Over the last few decades, industrialized countries have undergone significant socio-demographic changes. Women are furthering their education, have greater access to the labor market, and men are gradually losing their share of financial power in the household. The development of contraception has allowed women to delay their age of marriage and to focus on their careers. We see a decline in fertility, a decrease in marriages and an increase in divorces. In Chapter 1 of our thesis, we are interested in the impact of these changes on individual well-being and on inequalities, more precisely on educational homogamy in France and its evolution. To do so, we consider an economic approach to marriage based on the idea that marriage generates a surplus for the spouses. We consider an econometric matching model with transferable utility developed by Choo and Siow (2006) in order to estimate on French data, the marriage surplus and the educational homogamy over the period 1962-2011.The focus on inequality issues will become much deeper in the second chapter. The increase in homogamy leads to an increase in inequality. It is interesting to measure the impact of marriage on inequality, specifically income inequality. We therefore need a continuous matching model framework with transferable utility. For this, we rely on the model of Dupuy and Galichon (2014) which is a continuous extension of the model of Choo and Siow. We propose a slightly different approach to it in taking the possibility of singlehood in market equilibrium. Finally, we estimate this model on PSID data over the period 1968-2001.Chapter three takes the model proposed in the second and aims to solve analytically the matching market equilibrium with transferable utility. We place ourselves in a specific framework of a quasi full market where all individuals are almost married. We first show the equivalence with the Dupuy and Galichon model and then provide an analytical solution of the problem by considering a quadratic specification of the joint surplus from the matching and a Gaussian distribution of the observable variables. This chapter follows the objectives of Bolijov and Galichon (2015) work but with a different approach. In particular, we propose the analytical solutions of individual surpluses from marriage.The last chapter builds on the model developed in Chapter 2, and tries to recover the consumption within households at market equilibrium. We consider a matching market with transferable utility guaranteed by quasi-linear consumption preferences (Bergstrom and Cornes, 1983). Individuals choose to marry and then decide to consume public and private goods within the household. We show that it is possible to recover the parameters of the preferences in the marriage equilibrium. We estimate the model on PSID data over the period 1968-2001.

Proponents of early childhood education and care programs cite evidence that high-quality center-based childcare has positive impacts on child development, particularly for disadvantaged children. However, much of this evidence stems from randomized evaluations of small-scale intensive programs based in the United States and other Anglo/English-speaking countries. Evidence is more mixed with respect to widespread or universal center-based childcare provision. In addition, most evidence is based on childcare experiences of 3- to 5-year-old children. less is known about the impact of center-based care in earlier childhood. The French context is particularly suited to such interrogation because the majority of French children who attend center-based care do so in high-quality, state-funded, state-regulated centers, known as crèches, and before age 3. We use data from a large, nationally representative French birth cohort, the Étude Longitudinale Français depuis l'Enfance (Elfe), and an instrumental variables strategy that leverages exogenous variation in both birth quarter and local crèche supply to estimate whether crèche attendance at age 1 has an impact on language, motor skills, and child behavior at age 2. Results indicate that crèche attendance has a positive impact on language skills, no impact on motor skills, and a negative impact on behavior. Moreover, the positive impact on language skills is particularly concentrated among disadvantaged children. This implies that facilitating increased crèche access among disadvantaged families may hold potential for decreasing early socioeconomic disparities in language development and, given the importance of early development for later-life outcomes, thereby have an impact on long-term population inequalities.

In France, in March-April 2020, an additional 27,000 deaths (+27%) occurred from all causes compared to the same period in 2019, mainly due to excess mortality caused by Covid-19. Île-de-France (+91%) and Grand Est (+55%) were the most affected regions. Older people, those born abroad, and those living in the poorest and most densely populated communes were most affected. The risk of exposure to the virus varied according to social background: blue-collar and white-collar workers were more likely to continue to travel to work outside the home, and poorer people were more likely to live in dense municipalities and overcrowded housing. In addition, the latter are more likely to suffer from obesity or a pathology associated with a high risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19. 715,000 jobs were destroyed in the first half of 2020, primarily in temporary employment. However, the drop in economic activity came mainly from those who remained in employment: their working hours were reduced by 34% on average from 16 March to 10 May. Short-time working mainly affected blue-collar workers (54%) and white-collar workers (36%), while managers worked more at home (81%). A quarter of households feel that their financial situation has worsened as a result of the lockout, particularly those who have reduced their activity, those with children and those whose income was initially low. For the future, a quarter of people thought, at the end of April, that they would have difficulty paying their rent, their mortgage or their utilities in the next twelve months. People living alone more often than couples found confinement difficult (31% versus 24%). Access to a private outdoor space and the size of the dwelling also had an impact on this feeling, especially for low-income households or those with children. In confinement, women continued to do most of the housework and parenting, even when they were working outside: 19% of women and 9% of men aged 20 to 60 spent an average of at least four hours a day on housework. 43% of mothers and 30% of fathers spent more than six hours a day caring for children. 13% of those in couples argued more frequently than usual. One-third of academically challenged high school students spent three or more hours on schooling, compared with half of good students. Students from modest backgrounds or with academic difficulties more often encountered difficulties with materials or getting help from their parents. During confinement, more people engaged in music, dance, drawing, painting and sculpture, audio or video editing, or scientific or technical activities. The social gaps in amateur cultural practices have narrowed.

Over the past decades, men’s and women’s time use has changed dramatically suggesting a gender revolution across industrialized nations. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities. Men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate. Thus, women still perform more unpaid work irrespective of context. We investigate developments regarding men’s and women’s unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid-1980s and onwards. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework was primarily a result from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both genders only supporting convergence in contexts where men changed more than women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are generally explained by changes in behaviour rather than compositional changes in population characteristics.

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Since the 1970s, several European countries have experienced high union dissolution risk as well as high unemployment rates. The extent to which adverse economic conditions are associated with union instability is still unknown. This study explores the relationship between both individual and aggregate unemployment and union dissolution risk in five European countries before the recent economic crisis. Using rich longitudinal data from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, and Italy, the empirical analysis, based on discrete-time event history models, shows that male unemployment consistently increases the risk of union dissolution. While a strong association is observed between male unemployment and separation at the micro level, no association is found between male unemployment and union dissolution at the macro level. The results for female unemployment are mixed, and the size of the impact of female unemployment is smaller in magnitude than that of male unemployment. In Germany and Italy, where until very recently work has been less compatible with family life than in other countries, female unemployment is not significantly associated with union dissolution.

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This dissertation aims to explore the link between institutions, gender and politics. It seeks to answer three questions: Can institutions undo gender norms? Would institutions be more egalitarian if they were led by women? Why are women absent from positions of power? The first chapter of this dissertation aims to explore the role of institutions in creating gender norms. The norm studied is that a woman must earn less than her husband. Using, the division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that East German egalitarian institutions undid gender. After reunification, an East German woman can earn more than her husband without increasing her hours of domestic work, risking divorce or withdrawing from the labor market. In contrast, in West Germany, these behaviors are still observable.The second chapter examines whether institutions would be more egalitarian with women in charge. In particular, we investigate whether female politicians have the same priorities as their male colleagues. The context studied is the French Parliament during the period 2001-2017. By combining text analysis methods with exogenous variations in the gender of politicians, this chapter shows that, relative to their male colleagues, female politicians in the National Assembly are more advocates for women in the population. The issue where gender differences in parliamentary activity are most pronounced is precisely that of gender equality, followed by issues related to children and health. Men are more active on military issues. We show that these differences stem from the individual interests of legislators. Finally, we replicate these results in the Senate by exploiting the introduction of a reform that imposed parity.The third chapter looks at the reasons behind the under-representation of women in positions of power. It seeks to determine whether, in a context where politicians are predominantly men, the "incumbency bonus" in elections reduces the number of women elected. The context studied is that of municipalities of less than 1000 inhabitants in France. We show that, contrary to what one might expect, when politicians are not eligible for re-election, the share of women elected does not increase. This is because it is more difficult for a woman to replace a woman than to replace a man.

Couple formation over 50 has been largely unexplored until now. The lack of literature on this topic especially in France lies in the low number of events for this age group, even if it is increasing. From the Fideli 2016 two-year panel which combines comprehensive income and housing tax returns, we study the determinants of the union between women and men after 50 years (logistic regression), the type of union chosen: marriage, PACS or common-law union (multinomial regression), and the degree of homogamy within these new couples. The probability to form an union is higher for men than for women but sharply decreases with age for both. Previous marital status and income play different roles depending on the sex. Compared to never-married men, widowers are more likely to form a new couple. It is the opposite for women. Divorced men and women more often form a new union than others. While a high income increases the chances of repartnering for men, it decreases them for women. However, the effects of supply (less opportunity on the marriage market) cannot be disentangled from the effects of demand (less willingness and need to form a couple). For low income, forming a couple is one way to increase one's standard of living, at ages when it is difficult to increase the labor market participation. The type of union chosen also differs according to previous marital status and income. Over 50, the ex-spouses are more likely to marry, except for the widows who are the least likely to marry. Income plays positively on the fact of contracting an union for men. For women, the probability to contractualize theirs unions is highest at both ends of the income distribution. Over 50, men enter new unions with younger women and women who have similar levels of income. Women form new partnership with men who earn more than them.

This paper analyses how and when men and women devote their extra time to childcare and housework by exploiting an exogenous shock in scheduling: the partial implementation of the 35-hour workweek reform in France. Using propensity score matching and the most recent time use survey (INSEE, 2010), we show that time reallocations differ by gender and day of the week. While men dedicate their extra time to performing more housework on weekdays in the form of mainly time-flexible tasks such as repairs or shopping, they do less on weekends. This shift from weekends to weekdays is not observed for women who perform day-to-day tasks that are less transferable. Women spend more time on childcare and reduce multitasking. Overall, task specialization by gender is more pronounced, and this gendered use of similar extra time illustrates that time allocation is not only a question of time availability. In particular, men and women ‘do gender’ at weekends, when performing tasks is more visible to others.

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When paternity leave was introduced in France in 2002, the objectives were to involve fathers more closely with their children from an early age and thus reduce gender inequalities in the domestic sphere. This article assesses the impact of paternity leave on the distribution of domestic and parental tasks within couples in the first months after birth, doing so by using data from the national cohort of children born in 2011 (ELFE). In order to identify the effect of paternity leave, we take advantage of the survey's timing and the fact that some fathers have already taken leave when others are about to do so. A comparison of these two groups shows that paternity leave leads to a more equal division of parental tasks and some domestic activities after the birth of a first child. Depending on their level of education, fathers who have taken paternity leave perform some domestic and parental tasks rather than others. Even short-term paternity leave can thus lead to changes in behavior in the private sphere, which seems to continue up to when the child is 2 years old. From a theoretical point of view, these changes can be seen as changes in the technology of the household's production function: paternity leave gives fathers the opportunity to learn to perform child-related tasks.

When paternity leave was introduced in France in 2002, the objectives were to involve fathers more closely with their children from an early age and thus reduce gender inequalities in the domestic sphere. This article assesses the impact of paternity leave on the distribution of domestic and parental tasks within couples in the first months after birth, doing so by using data from the national cohort of children born in 2011 (ELFE). In order to identify the effect of paternity leave, we take advantage of the survey's timing and the fact that some fathers have already taken leave when others are about to do so. A comparison of these two groups shows that paternity leave leads to a more equal division of parental tasks and some domestic activities after the birth of a first child. Depending on their level of education, fathers who have taken paternity leave perform some domestic and parental tasks rather than others. Even short-term paternity leave can thus lead to changes in behavior in the private sphere, which seems to continue up to when the child is 2 years old. From a theoretical point of view, these changes can be seen as changes in the technology of the household's production function: paternity leave gives fathers the opportunity to learn to perform child-related tasks.

This article investigates domestic sphere investments, that is, housework and childcare time, of spouses in two consecutive relationships and aims to identify potential sources of variation. Economic reasoning would predict a learning effect from one partnership to the next, and hence less specialization in the domestic sphere in the second relationship. Prevailing gender norms or institutions, on the contrary, may prevent such adjustments in the division of housework. In a fixed-effects regression analysis with the German SocioEconomic Panel, we compare time allocations of couples whose members experienced two consecutive partnerships from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that women's and men's successive matches differ from each other. Women and their new partners tend to reallocate time from housework to childcare while men's individual domestic investment patterns remain similar across unions. Highly educated women conform most to the economic rationale by reducing their marital investments significantly in their next partnership.

Although most of the world's disabled people live in developing countries, little is known about the consequences of disability in this part of the world. Using the DHS-MICS 2011 data of Cameroon, this paper contributes to the literature by providing new robust estimates of the effect of child disability on education in a developing country context. It controls for unobserved heterogeneity within the households by using a 'true' sibling fixed effect model and also accounts for the severity of disability. The results show that moderate and severe disabilities reduce the probability that a child attends school and diminish school progress.

This article provides an original comparison of the time cost of children for the parental couple and for each parent in two European countries—France and Italy—that differ in terms of structural and normative constraints. Using time-use surveys carried out in 2008–2009 in Italy and in 2009–2010 in France, it investigates how Italian and French couples’ time use varies quantitatively according to the number and the age of their children. We estimate both the direct and indirect time cost of children and take into account the compression of the parents’ free time. After controlling for numerous covariates, the results corroborate the hypothesis that Italian children have a higher direct cost for couples (especially those with a large family or with preschool children), but also for mothers and fathers separately. Faced with this huge burden of childcare time, Italian women adjust by substituting housework with childcare. The presence of children reduces parents’ free time in both countries, but large families in Italy experience a higher and persistent loss of free time than in France. The gender imbalance in childcare is similar in both countries, but a more pronounced gender gap in time dedicated to domestic work is observed in Italy than in France. The loss of free time is always greater for women than for men in both countries, but in France, women’s free time is only partially affected by the number of children, contrary to Italy.

Empirical evidence has shown that married men generally earn more and married women earn less than their unmarried counterparts. However, the control group of "not married" differs between studies, over time and between countries, such that the message remains somewhat fuzzy. It is not clear whether the type of union or the fact of being in a union is responsible for these wage penalties and premiums. This article aims to analyze whether marriage pays more than cohabitation in a country such as France, where cohabiting and married partnerships have both coexisted for years. Thanks to a rich dataset with information on both the marital and work history of both partners, we are able to estimate the effect on hourly wages of being married relative to being in a cohabiting union. Taking into account selections into marriage (rather than cohabitation) and into the labor market with a possible differential in sharing of paid work within the couple, our results show that the men's marriage premium is due entirely to a positive selection into marriage. While the process of within-couple marital specialization strongly reduces a woman's hourly wage, there is no evidence of any additional marriage penalty for women. The within-couple gender wage gap is similar for married and cohabiting partners, after controlling for selection into marriage.

This article assesses the wage impact of different family‐friendly employer policies: in‐kind or in‐cash child‐related benefits and flexible work schedule arrangements. We use French matched employee–employer data with a rich set of indicators of family‐friendly benefits, and we pay attention to the possible endogeneity of worker–employer matching. Our results show that the provision of in‐cash or in‐kind benefits is associated with higher wages for women, while flexible work schedules have no significant effect on wages. Our results lead us to reject the hypothesis of compensating wage differentials: women do not appear to face a trade‐off between wages and a better work–life balance. Our findings are more in line with the enhancing productivity theory: in‐kind benefits reduce the time devoted to household activities and alleviate conflict between professional life and family life, thereby improving women's work effort and productivity. This is not the case for flexible work arrangements, which may be perceived as negatively related to workers’ commitment to their job.

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This article analyses how two co-residing generations contribute to the housework workload in Italy and France during the early 2000s. It studies the intergenerational exchange of time between young adults and their parents by indirectly comparing the level of domestic comfort enjoyed by young people in the two closely neighbouring countries. A focus on the reasons for staying in the parental home provides an explanation for the tendency of young Italian adults to prolong their stay in the family nest. The results of time-use surveys suggest that young Italians (especially young men) may benefit more than their French counterparts in co-residing with their parents. Beyond the compositional or structural effects, they perform fewer domestic tasks than their French counterparts, a result that is related to different cultural practices.

We examine how far the over-representation of women in part-time jobs can explain the gender gap in hourly earnings, and also investigate how far wage-setting institutions are correlated with the overall gender wage gap and the female part-time wage gap. Using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2009 data for 11 European countries, we implement a double decomposition of the gender wage gap: between men and women employed full-time and between full-time and part-time working women. This shows that the wage penalty of women employed part-time occurs mainly through the segregation of part-time jobs, but the full-time gender pay gap remains mostly unexplained. At the macro level, the gender wage gap tends to be higher in countries where part-time employment is more widespread. Some wage-setting institutions seem to reduce the female full-time/part-time pay gap and the gender gap among full-time workers.

In terms of economics, individuals divorce if their expected gains from marriage fall short of their expected utility outside the current marriage, and children represent a marriage-specific type of investment, which generally increases the value of marriage for the spouses. However, children may also disrupt marital stability as they will induce dramatic changes into the household allocation of money and time. In particular, children conceived before or after first marriage may be valued differently by the spouses and this may lead to marital conflicts. It is difficult to assign a priori the direction of the effect of children on marriage stability, and causality may run either way, as couples who anticipate a separation are more likely to have fewer children than those who are happy together, while children born before first marriage may be associated with a lower marriage attachment of their parents. Here, we follow an empirical approach and take advantage of the richness of the data on pre-marital history from the 24 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth79, to estimate the effect of children conceived before or after first marriage on marital stability. We find a significant deterrent effect of young children conceived during first marriage to the likelihood of divorce, while children conceived before first marriage are found to have a disruptive effect on marital stability.

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In recent decades, domestic organization has been affected by major changes, such as the rise in female labor force participation and educational attainment, and the reduction in family size. This article analyzes how men's and women's domestic and parental time has been modified by these changes since 1985. It examines changes in the averages and distributions of these two uses of time for all working-age people, with a particular focus on changes within couples. Over the past 25 years, women have devoted more time to parenting activities, but have significantly reduced the time devoted to housekeeping. This reduction is mainly due to changes in their practices, and to a much lesser extent to the increase in female activity and changes in family structures. The reduction is more noticeable for women who spend the most time in the domestic sphere. Men have become more involved in child rearing, with few or no fathers participating. However, men's contribution to other domestic tasks has remained stable. In 2010, women thus perform the majority of household and parental tasks - 71% and 65% respectively. This unequal distribution shows resistance to a more equal sharing of tasks. Within couples, domestic and parenting behaviors are positively related, highlighting common domestic demands and child-rearing preferences that go beyond social homogamy, as well as a lesser specialization of marital roles over time. The number of couples in which the man does more domestic work than his wife is increasing, representing a quarter of couples in 2010.

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Using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for the year 2009, the authors evaluate how vertical and horizontal job segregation explains the differential between full-time and part-time pay for prime-age women in four European countries: Austria, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom. The selected countries are representative of different welfare state regimes, labor market regulations, and extents and forms of part-time employment. Full-time hourly wages exceed part-time hourly wages, especially in market-oriented economies, such as Poland and the United Kingdom. Results using the Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition methods show that most of the full-time–part-time wage gap is driven by job segregation, especially its vertical dimension. Vertical segregation explains an especially large part of the pay gap in Poland and the United Kingdom, where, more than elsewhere, part-timers are concentrated in low-skilled occupations and the wage disparities across occupations are quite large.

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This thesis is devoted to the study of decision-making within couples and the analysis of educational choices by gender. To date, economic models offer a better understanding of these decisions, but fail to explain gender differences in their entirety. Indeed, traditional economic variables do not fully represent the allocation of time between partners, and human capital models fail to explain why girls choose lower paying educational paths. The first chapter of this thesis will then seek to better understand the determinants of "who gets what" in the couple, in terms of monetary resources and time. Then a second chapter will look at the production sphere of the household, by confronting the efficiency hypothesis to the time allocation choices in couples. It turns out that this hypothesis seems to be challenged at the level of the household production process. But how can we then represent behavior? It might be judicious to try to represent a second-order optimum, integrating social constraints or representations, and more particularly gender stereotypes or differentiated beliefs in society regarding the skills of men and women. The third chapter thus analyses the impact on educational choices of different beliefs about the skills of girls and boys in science and humanities. The final chapter examines the impact of gender stereotypes, this time concerning men's and women's skills in producing household goods.

Despite the increasing prevalence of dual-earner couples, women still perform the bulk of domestic and parental tasks within the household. In this paper, we investigate the role of the parental model in the persistence of this gender inequality. We study the possible correlation between the domestic time of parents and their young adult co-resident children using the French time-use survey conducted in 1999-2000 in which all family members aged above 14 years old were interviewed. Estimation results show a positive relationship between child and parental housework times. Girls' participation in domestic tasks is much higher than that of boys, but a gendered effect of the intergenerational relationship is not systematically confirmed and depends on the type of domestic tasks.

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There is a growing debate in Europe about whether parental leave should be short or long. The paper evaluates the impact of short parental leave on mothers' employment status and subsequent wages, with a special focus on the part-time parental leave option. It exploits a policy reform that took place in 2004 in France and increased the incentive to prolong the maternity leave after the first birth by six months paid parental leave. Data from the fourth round of the “Generation 98 survey” (CEREQ) and both difference-in-differences and propensity score matching approaches are used to estimate the effect of the reform. The results show that full-time short paid parental leave had almost no effect on labour market participation and wages of first mothers at the global level. However, for part-time paid leave takers, the reform increases the employment rate but decreases the subsequent wages. The wages remain lower two years after child birth, especially for the most educated, who mainly choose the part-time option.

Decisions regarding the division of labour are part of a dynamic process of negotiation between partners and thus develop throughout the life cycle, in relation to family events such as successive childbirths. This article investigates the degree of interaction between work and family of both partners in the long run over the life course. Using an innovative methodology, optimal matching analysis, and data from the French Family and Employers Survey (2004-05), it defines a typology of work-family strategies for about 950 long-lasting couples observed from 3 years before couple formation to 18 years later, and identifies related key life-course stages. Finally, it analyses the factors leading to the various trajectories, and assesses whether preferences or opportunities and constraints greatly influence couples' profiles. Results bring to light a wide variety of work-family patterns, where the number of children and the woman's employment trajectory are the key determinants of these couple profiles. In spite of the trend towards equal opportunities, only women adapt their work patterns, except in the most " work-oriented couples ". They use several strategies, by adjusting sequence and timing of births. In line with the standard human capital approach, partners' initial relative endowments influence couples' histories. A more traditional division of work is observed among less educated men and women, while women with greater human capital are more likely to remain employed through the transition to parenthood, whatever their partner's level of education.

The link between female employment and childbearing has attracted much research attention over the past decades, as fertility rates in Europe and elsewhere in the industrialised world have declined and remained below the level necessary for population replacement. Studies addressing the relationship have typically focused on the impact of female employment on fertility. Despite much research on this issue, causality remains unclear (Mira and Ahn, 2002. Engelhardt and Prskawetz, 2004. Kögel, 2004). Lately, the focus of the debate has moved from the effect of women’s employment on fertility to the effect of job insecurity on fertility for several reasons. First, the spread of dual-earner couples in high-income countries has made women’s employment less of an option but rather a fact. It is no longer female employment that has to adapt to fertility but the reverse, and fertility is guided by the possibility of mothers of being able to work and the conditions of work-family balance (Brewster and Rindfuss, 2000). Second, women’s employment is often an economic necessity for the family. Since the 1980s, the growing insecurity on the labour market with the high frequency of short-term jobs and high rates of unemployment has changed the context of childbearing decisions. Thus, the issue is no longer participating in the labour market so much as getting and keeping a job, for both men and women.

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The aim is to study the effect of unemployment on couples (cohabiting or married) in France in the 1990s. A reflection on the family-unemployment link, highlights the relative scarcity of economic works on both unemployment and family. A bivariate duration model shows that while the first job influences the first couple, the reverse is not true. The modeling of an unemployed single person describes the stress to which he is subjected. Devalued in the union market, the unemployed person may decide to couple right away. ...