Abstract
This paper presents a non-cooperative model of family labour supply which accounts for
the sociological fact that the role distribution between husband and wife is different
across different types of families. The role distribution is modeled by sharing rules
defining how income and housework is distributed among family members. The model is
applied to the analysis of the retirement decision of spouses. Four types of family
structures are studied more closely: Independent partners, income sharing partners,
partriarchal families, and housework sharing partners. It turns out that with the still
predominating partriachal family structure an increase of the minimum retirement age
may affect both partners in a different way. While an increase of the wife's minimum
retirement age definitely increases also the retirement age of the husband, an increase of
the minimum retirement age of the husband may induce earlier retirement of the wife.
Thus, the model provides a theoretical explanation for the asymmetric retirement of
spouses observed in recent empirical studies.
Forschungs-