Ecuaciones de Mincer de parejas bajo un esquema de selección muestral bivariada: una aplicación al caso argentino

Abstract

Este documento explora el efecto de las decisiones laborales conjuntas sobre la estimacion de ecuaciones de Mincer en parejas. El sesgo de seleccion muestral se genera por la relacion entre la decision de trabajar y el salario. La mayoria de la literatura considera modelos de participacion laboral individuales como mecanismo de seleccion. Sin embargo, evidencia reciente muestran una mayor participacion laboral de las mujeres y una mayor relevancia en la decision conjunta de los conyuges creando un mecanismo de seleccion conjunto. Una version bivariada del metodo de Heckman da una solucion a este problema. Los resultados indican que la decision conjunta de la pareja es un factor relevante en el sesgo por seleccion.

This working paper explores the effect of joint labor decisions on the study of wage regression models. The estimation of Mincer equations suffers from numerous sources of bias, including the sample selection problem generated by the fact that agents’ decision to work is not independent of their wage levels. Most of the papers correct for this bias using a model of individual labor participation. However, recent trends in the labor market show greater participation of women in the labor force and seem to indicate that the joint decision of the spouses is increasingly relevant in determining the selection mechanism. A bivariate version of Heckman’s method appears as an interesting alternative to solve this problem. Although the estimates are in line with the previous literature, the results indicate that the joint decision of the couple is a relevant factor in the selection bias.