Assortative Mating and Women's Working-Hours Decisions in Turkey

Abstract

Wives' decisions regarding their working hours and their assortative mating levels with respect to income affect the main determinants of family-income inequality in any given country. In this paper, I estimate the degree of sorting between both husbands' earnings and wives' working hours and between husbands' earnings and wives' earnings in Turkey. For the analyses I have used the Turkish Statistical Institute's Labor Force Surveys conducted from 2004 to 2017, estimated the assortative mating coefficient for each year separately, and then pooled the data. The results indicate that positive assortative mating in terms of earnings exists for all the analysed years. The results further suggest that a negative relationship exists between a husband's income and his wife's working hours in Turkey.