Poster presentation in a ECSR (The European Consortium for Sociological Research) conference in Milan, Italy, in 2017.

1. Data from the Finnish longitudinal
census data file (Statistics Finland) for
the period from 1990 to 2012.
• a sample of women who were
between 15 and 55 years old and
lived with a partner during the
transition
Average marginal effects of logistic
regressions
• probabilities of transitions between
labor market status: employment
and non-employment
• main focus is the effect of partner’s
resources (income) on the woman’s
probability of employment
transition
• other important factors are the year
of the transition and woman’s
income
Sonja Drobnič University of Bremen, Katja Marjanen University of Helsinki
and Katja Pohjola University of Turku
PARTNER’S INCOME AND WOMEN’S
EMPLOYMENT TRANSITIONS IN FINLAND
• What is the impact of partner’s
resources on a woman’s labor-force
participation? In other words, does
partner’s income reduce or
facilitate a woman’s employment
when her own resources are taken
into account?
• Context: Finland is a well-
established dual-earner society and
one of the few countries in Europe
with a continuously high female
full-time employment rate
RESEARCH QUESTION
H1: Growing economic independence of partners  no effect
H2: Gender role specialization  negative effect
H3: High income homogamy  positive effect
HYPOTHESES
AVERAGE MARGINAL EFFECTS OF LOGISTIC REGRESSION
• Non-employed women (N=47,102) who live with a low-income partner are
less likely to enter employment than those with mid- and high-income
partner. Employed women (N=51,477) are more likely to become non-
employed if they live with low-income partner, and correspondingly women
with high-income partner are less likely to become non-employed. This
effect is explained by woman’s income.
• Hence, hyptotheses 1 and 3 were supported.
• We can see the effects of the depression of 1990’s and growing
unemployment rates of 2000’s in our results. However, transitioning from
employment to non-employment has stayed high through out the years after
the depression.
• Having children under 7 years old decreases the probability to enter
employment by 7 % and increases the probability to enter non-employment
by 3 %. Also, the income of the woman has expected effect; the higher the
income potential, the lower the probability for non-employment and the
higher the probability to enter employment.
CONCLUSION
DATA & METHOD
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the
Strategic Research Council of the
Academy of Finland (decision
number: 293103)
Contact: katja.pohjola@utu.fi
< 20 000
20 000 - 40 000
40 000 -
-.06 -.04 -.02 0 .02 -.06 -.04 -.02 0 .02
Non-employed --> Employed Employed --> Non-employed
unadjusted adjusted
Partner's Income
1987 - 1990
1991 - 1995
1996 - 2000
2001 - 2005
2006 - 2012
-.2 -.1 0 .1 -.2 -.1 0 .1
Non-employed --> Employed Employed --> Non-employed
unadjusted adjusted
Year of the transition
Non-employed -->
Employed
Employed --> Non-
employed
15 - 25 0.05 *** (0.008) -0.01 *** (0.001)
35 - 44 0.01 (0.005) -0.01 *** (0.001)
45 - 55 -0.06 *** (0.008) -0.001 (0.002)
Basic -0.04 *** (0.009) 0.01 *** (0.001)
Secondary -0.01 (0.009) 0.004 ** (0.001)
Union status (ref.
Cohabiting)
Married 0.01 (0.005) -0.01 *** (0.001)
Children under 7 yrs
(ref. No)
Yes -0.07 *** (0.004) 0.03 *** (0.001)
59223 414110
0.1589 0.2128
Standard errors in parentheses: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
N
Pseudo r2
Other variables in the model
Age (ref. 25 - 34)
Education (ref.
Tertiary)
< 10 000
10 000 - 20 000
20 000 - 30 000
30 000 -
-.4 -.2 0 .2 .4 -.4 -.2 0 .2 .4
Non-employed --> Employed Employed --> Non-employed
unadjusted adjusted
Woman's Income