The Effect of Marriage on Women's Work in Home

Since family economics is the application of economic theory in explaining behavior with respect to family, marriage is undoubtedly one of the items in this realm. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of marriage on women's home labor supply theoretically and empirically. Accordingly, the utility maximization approach is applied to demonstrate how the behavior of a typical single woman changes after happening of marriage. The theoretical model predicts that women move to specialization in home production following marriage and their welfare will increase therefore. Two samples including single and married women who reside in Tehran have used to present empirical evidence. These samples are restricted to all regions of Tehran on the basis of segmentation carried out by municipality. Data have gathered by questionnaire which was constructed by author. Results approve the prediction of theoretical analysis. Estimations show that happening marriage will significantly lead to increase in home labor supply. These findings suggest that women specialize in home production by marriage. In addition, results also indicate that income, education and employment have negative and statistically significant effect on work within home while, by contrast, the number of children has positive and statistically significant impact.