Spousal Mobility and Earnings*

In the substantial literature on the relationship between migration and earnings, an important finding has been that the earnings of married women typically decrease with a move while the earnings of married men often increase. This is consistent with the story that married women are more likely to act as the “trailing spouse” or to be a “tied-mover.” This paper considers a related but largely unexplored question: what is the effect of having an occupation that is associated with frequent migration on the migration decisions of your household and on the earnings of your spouse? How do these effects differ between men and women? The Public Use Microdata Sample from the 2000 Decennial Census is used to calculate 5-year metropolitan-based migration rates by occupation and education. The analysis estimates the effects of these occupational mobility measures on the migration of couples and the earnings of married individuals. Analysis is conducted separately for four groups of couples: both have college degrees (“power couples”), only the husband has a college degree, only the wife has a college degree, and neither has a college degree. Results indicate that the migration rates in both the husband’s and wife’s occupations affect the household migration decision, but mobility in the husband’s occupation matters considerably more. Among never-married individuals with college degrees, however, men and women are equally responsive to occupational mobility in their migration behavior. The earnings analysis uses occupation fixed-effects and average wage in occupationeducation class to control for substantial heterogeneity in earnings potential. For couples in which the husband has a college degree, regardless of wife’s education, wife’s mobility has no effect on husband’s earnings, but husband’s mobility has a large, significant negative effect on wife’s earnings. This negative effect does not exist for couples in which only the wife has a college degree. The results of both the migration and earnings analysis indicate an asymmetry in how the careers of husbands and wives are weighed in household location decisions.