The effect of marital dissolution on the labour supply of males and females: Evidence from Canada

The literature on divorce and labour supply generally analyzes standard labour supply measures such as annual hours worked. We include hours per day and days per week as two new dimensions of work time, and use a 3-year panel which allows us to address the effects of divorce on five time dimensions simultaneously. For males, we find that divorce can result in short-term labour supply changes as high as 10-20% of pre-divorce labour supply levels, depending on the time dimension and comparator group. For females, our data do not reveal any significant changes in labour supply.