Housing and labor supply

The types and risks of life-styles and their impact on labor and housing markets raise increasing attention. We address the question how people allocate their work effort under a given structure of incomes according to family status, skills, tenure, and cost. The interplay between work hours supply, income uncertainties, gender-specific skill levels, and spatial differentiation is investigated by means of econometric models that are parsimonious in structure. Up to certain limits the scale of income uncertainties explains work effort in partnerships and among singles. Mating of skills in partnerships likely plays a decisive role how incomes are pooled to cover housing costs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science.