Labour Supply of Married Women in Thailand: 1985–2016

This study investigates the labour supply behaviour of married Thai women with reference to their own and their spouse's wages. By utilising data of the national Labour Force Survey in Thailand from 1985 to 2016, the wage imputation technique and the instrumental variables approach are applied to correct sample selection and to alleviate endogeneity, common issues that cause bias in estimating female labour supply. By controlling for spousal education and number of children, the main findings indicate an inverse relationship between married women's labour supply and wages, contrary to the results found in most developed countries. The estimated own wage elasticity ranges from -1.70 to -2.40 and cross elasticity ranges from -0.16 to -0.17, indicating that the impact of own wage on labour supplied is much larger than spouse's wage. The results from disaggregation classified according to different socioeconomic backgrounds also show the negative elasticities between own and spouses' wage across all subgroups, except for those with university degrees and higher income.