Participation of Married Women in the Labour Market and the 'Added Worker Effect' in Europe

In this paper, we estimate labour participation equations for married women for eleven European countries, using data from the European Community Household Panel corresponding to the years 1994, 1995 and 1996. The main objective of our study is to test whether the 'added worker effect' holds. From our results it can be concluded that the labour market participation of the married woman basically depends on her personal and family characteristics, her non-wage income and her potential earnings. In only a few countries does the participation of married women seem to be related to the work status of the husband. However, the consistently significant and negative effect of the woman's non-wage income (basically the husband's wage) prevents the 'added worker effect' from being completely rejected as a hypothesis. It seems, therefore, that female labour market participation continues to have a 'secondary' role in the family sphere in some European countries.