Crisis at home: mancession-induced change in intrahousehold distribution

Abstract

The Great Recessions was essentially a 'mancession' in countries like Spain, the UK or the US, i.e. it hit men harder than women for they were disproportionately represented in heavily affected sectors. We investigate how the mancession, and more generally women's relative opportunities on the labor market, translate into within-household redistribution. Precisely, we estimate the spouses' resource shares in a collective model of consumption, using Spanish data over 2006-2011. We exploit the gender-oriented evolution of the economic environment to test two original distribution factors: first the regional-time variation in spouses' relative unemployment risks, then the gender-differentiated shock in the construction sector (having a construction sector husband after the outburst of the crisis). Both approaches conclude that the resource share accruing to Spanish wives increased by around 7-9 percent on average, following the improvement of their relative labor market positions. Among childless couples, we document a 5-11 percent decline in individual consumption inequality following the crisis, which is essentially due to intrahousehold redistribution.Keywords: mancession, intrahousehold allocation, unemployment risk JEL: C3, D12, D13 + We thank the two anonymous referees for their many valuable comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to Olivier Donni, Frederic Vermeulen and participants to the ADRES conference and to seminars at ISER (Essex), THEMA (Cergy-Pontoise), AMSE (Aix-Marseille) and LEO (Orleans) for their helpful suggestions. All errors remain ours.

Informal Work Along the Business Cycle: Evidence from Argentina

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Self-Employment in Times of Crisis: The Case of the Spanish Financial Crisis

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Self-Employment in Times of Crisis: The Case of the Spanish Financial Crisis

“…The Crisis also changed household income and expenditure, especially where the head of the household was self-employed. Bargain and Martinoty (2019) crafted the term "mancession" to explain that the Spanish financial Crisis reshaped the household budget structure, suggesting that male self-employees were more affected in terms of budget decision compared to female self-employees; thus, their role in making household purchase decisions changed.…”