Why Does Unemployment Come in Couples ?

In this paper we first raise the factual question of whether wives of unemployed husbands have a higher chance of unemployment than wives of employed husbands. Data for Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the USA in the first half of the 1980s indicate that this indeed is the case. We then seek to explain this finding. According to one explanation, (un)employment homogamy is a by-product of educational homogamy combined with a relation at the individual level between education and unemployment. Although the existence of educational homogamy in Canada, the Netherlands and the USA could be ascertained, and although in these countries unemployment is higher when education is lower, these findings could not fully explain the observed extent of (un)employment homogamy in these countries. According to a more complex explanation, the phenomenon of (un)employment homogamy will disappear when we allow, after these effects of education, for similar effects of age and region. This explanation was tested for the USA, and did not explain the observed extent of (un)employment homogamy in this country