http://repub.eur.nl/res/concept/jel-J12/ Recent publications classified by JEL Code J12 en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21022/ 2009-08-01T00:00:00Z Dominant development policy approaches recommend women’s employment on the grounds that it facilitates their empowerment, which in turn is believed to be instrumental in enhancing women’s well-being. However, empirical work on the relationship between women’s employment status and their well-being as measured by freedom from marital violence yields an ambiguous picture. Motivated by this ambiguity, this paper draws on testimonies of men and women and data gathered from rural Uttar Pradesh, to examine the effect of women’s employment and asset status as measured by their participation in paid work and their ownership of property, respectively, on spousal violence. Unlike the existing literature, we treat women’s work status and violence as simultaneously determined and find that women’s engagement in paid work and ownership of property, are associated with sharp reductions in marital violence. Bedi, A.S. Chhachhi, A. Bhattacharyya, M. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/8170/ 2006-12-01T00:00:00Z The emergence of the housewife in the Netherlands over the period 1812-1922 was strongly influenced by the social norm that women should withdraw from the labour market on the eve of marriage. Adherence to this norm is most clearly reflected in the emergence of the housewife among the lower classes, especially at the close of the nineteenth century among wives of farmers. Women in urban municipalities, however, set the norm far earlier and differences across social classes were significantly larger in towns than in rural areas. Paradoxically, the rise of the housewife did not change work pressures for lower–class women. This paradox is resolved by noting that they substituted registered work for unregistered work, e.g., in house industries, working in the family firm or farm. Poppel, F.W.A. van Dalen, H.P. van Walhout, E. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6599/ 2005-02-02T00:00:00Z Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing premium remains. We extend the model of Burdett and Coles (1997) with a distinction between efficient (cities) and less efficient (non-cities) search markets. One implication of the model is that singles are more likely to move from rural areas to cities while married couples are more likely to make the reverse movement. A second prediction of the model is that attractive singles benefit most from a dense market (i.e. from being choosy). Those predictions are tested with a unique Danish dataset. Gautier, P.A. Svarer, M. Teulings, C.N.