Fatherhood, Marriage and Labour Market Outcomes

The study analyzes how the labor supply and salary change for men who have become fathers or are preparing to become them, as well as those who have married or started living together with a partner. The results can be useful for public policy on the labor market, as well as for demographic policy, which has become an increasingly relevant topic for discussion. It is assumed that paternity and marriage affect a man's salary and working hours, while different marital statuses (married, living together, single) do not have the same effect on a man's salary and working hours. The work is based on the analysis of individual data from the RLMS database (Russian longitudinal monitoring survey) for households from 1994 to 2017. Comparative tests were performed, and using the “difference of differences” method basic regressions were constructed. It was found that the effects are observed in the group of those men who are living together and those who are expecting a child in the observed period. Changes in the status of having children and marital status in the past period negatively affect the probability of a single man becoming employed, and the appearance of a child in the future period reduces the indicator of the logarithm of wages in the observed period. In the group of those who do not have children, a change in marital status in the past period does not affect employment, and for those who already have children, a future change in marital status also does not increase the likelihood of becoming employed. Finally, it is possible to conclude that marital status has a wide range of psychological effects on men's behavioral models, so in future research it might be useful to find a proper solution for those marital effects that constructed a basis for appearance of wide variety of psychological effects that influence on man’s life goals and motives of behavior.