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This study examines the impact of work-to-family conflict (WFC) on depression for employed husbands and wives in Japan, the moderating role of own psychological family involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression, and the moderating role of spouses’ family and job involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression.

We use a matched sample of Japanese employed husbands and wives to examine the relationships between inter-spousal dynamics about work–family conflict and psychological well-being.

We found that (1) the effect of WFC on depression was larger for wives, (2) husbands’ and wives’ own psychological family involvement did not moderate the relationship between WFC and their depression, and (3) spousal family and job involvement operated as a moderator only for husbands. While WFC reduced husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in their jobs psychologically and behaviorally, WFC increased husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in family at both psychological and behavioral levels.

Employers need to take into account the importance of looking simultaneously at the ways employed husbands and wives work when trying to understand how workplace conditions may be changed to ameliorate psychological well-being for spouses.

This study suggests that an experience of conflict between work and family is likely to deteriorate the psychological well-being for employed husbands and wives in non-Western contexts like Japan. Furthermore, spousal involvements in family and work domains are likely to play moderating roles in the relationship between WFC and depression.

Constructing pseudo-panel data from successive Current Population Surveys, this paper analyzes earnings inequality in husband and wife families over the life cycle and over time. Particular attention is devoted to the role of labor supply in influencing measures of earnings inequality. Compact and accurate descriptions of earnings inequality are derived that facilitate the analysis of the effect of the changing market employment of wives on earnings inequality. The growing propensity of married women to work for pay has mitigated the increase in family earnings inequality. Alternative measures of earnings inequality covering people with different degrees of attachment to the labor market are constructed. Inferences about the extent and changes in earnings inequality are sensitive to alternative labor supply definitions especially in the case of wives.

To what extent do couples expect to retire together? What distinguishes “atypical congruent” couples who expect to retire separately? What distinguishes “non-congruent” couples who disagree on retirement plans? Using U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, we find that “Atypical Congruent” (separate retirement) couples have shorter marriages, larger age differences, unequal decision-making, dependent children, and pension plans for both husband and wife. They are also more frequently interracial or minority couples. “Non-Congruent” couples (who disagree on retirement plans) are distinguished by wife's earnings and husband's occupational status and work schedule.

Drawing upon the 5% Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses (with comparisons to the 1980 Census through the work of Uhlenberg & Cooney, 1990), this paper examines the changing characteristics of the U.S. young physician labor force (aged 30–49). Currently, over 45% of medical degrees are earned by women, but gendered work-family patterns persist. Measures examined include income, hourly wages, mean work hours, part-time and overtime work, practice setting, marital status, and children. For a sub-sample of physicians married to physicians, I also examine income and work hour differentials. Close attention is paid to whether a marriage premium and/or a motherhood penalty in wages exists and persists over time. Implications of the documented workforce diversity are discussed for organizations within which physicians are employed.

The purpose of this paper is to check the existence of the added worker effect (AWE) in Italy during the Great Recession.

The authors used the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth to study factors driving the change in female work status over the period 2006-2012. The probit model was used to identify the timing, significance and the magnitude of the AWE. The authors also performed panel estimates to understand how women, positioned at either extensive or intensive margins, respond to the reduction in male hours of work which appear to be crucial for the AWE to manifest.

The authors find that with the crisis progressing, Italian women respond ever less to the reduction in male earnings, at the same time they become more responsive to the job loss by male partner which is the worst outcome. This means that the AWE survives, even if only in cases of serious hardship. It also remains when the reduction in male incomes is coupled with the reduction in their hours of work, suggesting that the redistribution of household chores is an important prerequisite for women to get into work.

This paper provides evidence on the AWE in Italy during the Great Recession. The authors took into account the peculiarity of the Italian labour market whose performance was affected by the use of the Wage Supplementation Fund. It masks part of the AWE when the standard methodology is used. By looking at the reduction in male earnings with or without a change in their work hours, the authors were able to reveal additional channels through which the AWE operates in Italy.

Although the news media have speculated that the current recession has increased rates of intimate partner violence, there is no reliable evidence supporting that claim. Moreover, no well-designed studies have examined the impact of prior recessions. This chapter considers whether rising employment during a period of economic growth reduces intimate partner violence. The findings on the effect of economic growth are used to assess the likely impact of economic decline on rates of intimate partner violence. Using data from the National Crime Victim Surveys, the analyses examine both macro-level trends and individual-level effects. At the macro-level, men's and women's unemployment rates were only weakly related to rates of intimate partner violence. The individual-level results show that rising rates of employment during a period of economic growth were not responsible for producing declines in intimate partner violence. Taken together, these findings suggest that the current recession will not increase rates of intimate partner violence against women.

Societies the world over are currently experiencing a common phenomenon ‐ a greater rise in the number of two‐paycheck families than ever before! Knowing the stresses of rearing a family while simultaneously pursuing a dual‐earner lifestyle, two‐earner couples in many societies are also presumably experiencing the same dilemma ‐ whether or not to bear and raise children while simultaneously pursuing careers. In a sense, the very family rubric may be said to be currently at the crossroads. Controversies such as the “mommy track” (1989), and the mixed messages that are sent to working couples by societal culture, organisational values, and personal beliefs do not help to relieve the experienced tensions of the working couples either. It is important for dual‐career family members to know how parental status and the number of children impact on the quality of their experienced life, which is ultimately reflected in the state of their mental health. Being knowledgeable about this would help dual‐earner partners to make educated decisions regarding their desired family size.

Both declining job security and the need for dual careers constitute two complicating factors in the lives of middle-class American families. Rarely, however, are these two phenomena investigated simultaneously. Drawing on both survey and in-depth interview data of a sample of middle-class couples in upstate New York, we document the pervasiveness of couple-level job insecurity, and the extents at-risk couples anticipate job loss and employers prepare workers for job termination. We argue that the new middle-class job insecurity is effectively doubled for dual-earner couples, reshaping the temporalities of career development across the life course.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.